The morning after the big feast, with tryptophan still coursing through my veins, I woke up early to indulge in a form of consumption that the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving would not have recognized: livestreaming golf on a personal device.
What a difference a few decades make.
More than forty years ago, in an era when Vin Scully was still in control, I tuned into the inaugural Skins Game on a small black-and-white in my dorm room, playing with bunny ears for better reception. Now the event was playing out on my laptop, broadcast over the airwaves on a platform owned – appropriately for Black Friday – by the largest online retailer in the world.
Sport is business and trade is sport. Always has been. That was clear enough in 1983, when Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Gary Player captured it at Desert Mountain in Arizona. That girl Skins had his sponsors, his signage, his corporate imprint. But compared to Friday’s version — the 2025 Capital One Skins Game — it felt as strange as a trip to the mall. The entire purse amounted to $360,000 at the time – about a quarter of what the last hole was worth this time – and the whole enterprise had the air of holiday escapism. You tuned in for the golf, but also for the desert sun and the banter between four ancient legends. Even though that first Skins was shot, edited and broadcast over two days, you still got the feeling that in the silence before December you were stumbling upon something that had not yet been written.
Then it went away. After 2008, the event disappeared for 17 years, a hiatus long enough to skip an entire generation of fans. The decision to bring it back marked a break from today’s televised golf, which so overtly targets younger generations with its TGLs and YouTube influencer tournaments. This Skins was more like a nod to graybeards, a gentle stroll down memory lane.
The broadcast leaned on that nostalgia. It opened with highlights from the first edition – retro graphics, Sansabelts, a silver-haired Arnold Palmer – as if inviting us to commemorate not just the four-man match, but the era that framed it. Interviews with players from previous generations underlined the reporting. Annika Sorenstam called to remember when. So did Fred Couples, who delivered an endearing moment out of time by revealing that he had offered to handle the first tee introductions until he realized the event was in Florida and not Palm Springs.
In any case, looking backwards has helped bring the present into sharper focus. Couples sum it up best: In this case, you don’t really worry about how you play. The only thing you pay attention to is the money. As a fan, you can also prioritize the moolah by placing a live bet on the action. DraftKings had cameos during commercial breaks.
None of this was a reason to begrudge this year’s cast. Xander Schauffele, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Keegan Bradley are immensely likeable players who are still in their prime and still capable of putting on shot shows. There was a bit of that in it. Bradley played the most stable and walked away with the most skins. A rusty Schauffele was left out, but won the entertainment category with a droll sense of humor and a deadly, improvised Sam Burns impression.
For all its throwback content, the event also had some recent history to draw on in the form of the Ryder Cup, which added a bit of spice to the banter. Lowry couldn’t resist a playful swipe at Bradley: “I just broke Keegan Bradley’s heart the last few months,” he said after draining a birdie putt to halve the second hole. Every viewer knew the context, regardless of his or her age.
The commentary, meanwhile, was largely syrupy, befitting a televised treat, although it could have done without some of the sugar coating. Peter Jacobsen, an affable presence and himself a veteran of many hit-and-giggles, tried to discuss the intensity of the nerves, as if this were the Masters and not a light-hearted payday. As if Fleetwood hadn’t rushed in from his home in Dubai at the last minute and crossed the finish line without having to do a practice lap.
In addition to possible jet lag, he had to get up early to make his tee time, not because golf fans were clamoring for dawn patrol skins, but because the event had to clear before the Bears-Eagles game was scheduled to start. Even big-money fourball games are chicken feed compared to the economic power of the NFL.
Do I sound like an old grump?
That’s not what I mean. What I feel is mainly melancholy, which shouldn’t be a shocker. By helping us recapture the way things used to be, nostalgia also highlights what we think we’ve lost. I’m not naive. I don’t think the early 80’s was an era of innocence, or that Jack and Arnie weren’t in it for the money too. Was the world really so different then than it is now? Probably not. But I had seen less of it. Come to think of it, maybe what I missed most was my own youth, something no amount of skins could ever buy me back.
#Skins #Game #melancholic #walk #memory #lane