Couples’ Skins Color Is Green

Urban legend has it that the term “skin” in golf may have originated with world-traveling hunters playing for pelts when they came ashore; or with one player’s attempt to skin (as in skinned alive) or swindle an opponent.

In the suburban world of Fred Couples, however, the appeal of the $1-million Skins Game is decidedly more civilized. “To me, you’re in Palm Springs, with nice weather, Thanksgiving weekend and everyone is watching.... Some guys [on the PGA Tour] don’t really care for the format. I don’t know why. It’s a great stage.”

Couples, the defending champion and a perennial participant, will take on two icons and an upstart in this year’s version at the Trilogy Golf Club in La Quinta on Saturday and Sunday. Tiger Woods, who has never won the made-for-TV event, and Annika Sorenstam, who made a flashy debut last year, will be joined by 24-year-old Australian Adam Scott in an attempt to swindle a few pelts from Couples. Woods and Sorenstam are coming off wins last week.

In last year’s event, Sorenstam -- the standard-bearer for women’s golf and the only woman to play in the men’s Skins Game -- holed a 39-yard bunker shot for an eagle on the ninth hole and led the 18-hole event at the halfway point before eventually finishing second with five skins and $225,000.

Sorenstam, who missed the cut in the 2003 Colonial, says she is “not going to play in another official PGA event.... I enjoy playing on the LPGA. I like to win tournaments.”

But playing against the men in “these type of formats -- skins games, TV matches -- I love it,” she says.

One reason she likes it so much is that Trilogy’s moderate length and difficult pin placements set up well for her game.

“I might not be able to hit it 300 yards,” she says, but Trilogy is “a course where distance [is] not the major factor.” Last year, she says, “the par-fours were very reachable for me with shorter irons. You have to hit it straight, which is one of my strengths.”

Hitting it straight has been a sore subject for Woods, who recently has shown signs of recapturing the swing that propelled him to the top of the golf world for much of the last eight years. Before winning a tournament in Japan on Sunday, the recently married Woods had finished second or tied for second in three of his previous four tour events.

Scott might be the unknown of the group to the public, but his competitors are well aware that he has won two tournaments this year, including the Players Championship, and had seven top-10 finishes. “If anyone has ever seen Adam Scott hit a ball, [they know] he can win the first hole or the 18th or the 16 of them in between,” Couples says.

Scott, whose swing has been compared to that of Woods (he studied under former Woods swing guru Butch Harmon), also tied the tournament record of 21 under par in winning the Booz Allen Classic this year.

But if anyone embodies the easygoing ambience of the Skins Game, it is Couples -- who has won the event four times and finished second three times. Casual, congenial and perpetually boyish, he is a familiar visage for the post-Thanksgiving viewing audience.

“It is kind of like being at the Masters or U.S. Open,” he says. “And whether it is ‘silly season’ for some people or not ... you still have to make a putt to beat Annika, Tiger and Adam.”