I used to really enjoy watching the Skins Game when Turkey day came around once a year. It was exciting to watch the game's best go mano y mano for mucho dinero. But over time, the marquee silly season event changed and so did my interest.What changed? This year the event moved to a new course, the new Celebrity Course at Indian Wells Golf Resort. But that can only be a positive since the previous course, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta, was just not up to snuff. I played that course shortly after it opened in 2002 and it was one of the most disappointing $150+ green fees that I've ever spent. While golf is hard enough, this course just didn't offer much in the way of challenges. The fairways are about as wide as they are long. The small, densely-packed cookie-cutter tract homes that line the fairways ruin the otherwise beautiful natural desert and mountain surroundings. It wouldn't surprise me if the course paid the Skins Game a ton of dough to host the event.
So what changed that turned me off to the Skins Game? Quite simply, it was the players that played in the event. This year the usual $1 million purse was up for grabs for Stephen Ames, Fred Couples, Zach Johnson, and long hitter Brett Wetterich. You gotta be kidding me. I'm a huge golf fan, but you gotta have at least one marquee name to get me to tune in to an off-season golf event. Not only was I uninterested, I was disgusted. What did these guys do to deserve a million bucks playing golf for fun over two days? I bet if they reduced the total purse to $100,000 these same players would have still shown up. It took 25 years but I guess it's official now, the Skins game no longer features the game's best.
The Skins Game debacle just cast a pall over the whole silly season for me. Not only did I not watch a single second of the Skins Game, I didn't watch any silly season event this year. The real season just can't start soon enough!
