Monday morning caddyshack: the LG Skins Game simultaneously preposterous and meaningless

The LG Skins Game was as exciting as a skins game can be, and yet I still feel so completely unsatisfied, just a few hours after watching it. And not because K.J. Choi won, mind you. Any of the four could have won and produced the same effect.

The Skins Game offers up just enough cash to be preposterous, but not enough to be really meaningful. The $415,000 K.J. won to win the event? A ridiculous sum of cash to take home for playing 18 holes of golf over two days. Life-changing for the majority of people watching it on TV. Oh, not retirement money, but still...

And yet, not enough money to really make a difference in K.J.'s career. He has hit far more meaningful putts to win way more than the $270,000 on the line in the final hole of the match. The skins game used to mean a lot more than it does now. Jack Nicklaus' putt to win $250,000 back in 1984 was for more money than he'd ever won in any tournament before then.

That statistic is simultaneously sad and impressive; those skins were worth something, but more than anything else the Golden Bear had ever won? Ouch. Wow.

For the current incarnation of the skins game to become truly eye-catching, they need to step up the prize money. And given the currrent state of the economy of sponsoring sporting events, that's not going to happen for a few years.

So we're left with a friendly course, set up for action, and some moments of drama sprinkled over 18 holes and two days. Mickelson's shot out of the rough on the par-5 fourth on Saturday was an amazing shot. Downhill lie in light rough, he still managed to work a 230-yard draw over water to within three feet for a tap-in eagle. Left the gambler was alive and well, and would take some more skins on Sunday. But his missed putt on 18, after getting the perfect read from Mediate, was painful. Again. At least Mickelson he was in it until the very end, and didn't shoot himself out of the tournament by pulling driver on the final hole.

A few years back there was an article in GQ Magazine which quoted a bunch of PGA Tour golfers off the record as saying Phil Mickelson is one of the most hated golfers on tour. His nickname is, purportedly, FIGJAM, short for, "f*@k I'm good, just ask me." I kept listening in to all of the mic'd conversations, trying to catch any evidence to support or denounce such a story. Impossible to get a read on, but I will say that Mickelson tried exceptionally hard to be playful with everyone else out there. Everyone else was playful back.

The format of the Skins game blows pretty hard, though. The only reason to have it spread out over two days is to get more air-time for the lead sponsor. Otherwise, why not bang out 18 holes and call it a day? It does build-in some drama, making the players "sleep on" the number of skins that were carrying over. Yay. Ames won a single hole in the tournament, and it was the first hole of Sunday, worth $250,000. Maybe there is something to this whole Sunday morning nerves thing, after all.

I had Rocco Mediate totally misread. I thought he would actually talk some smack and try to get in everyone else's head. It was more like his endless chatter simply overpowered the announcers, and kept the gallery entertained. He's still my favorite underdog, and when they showed the recap of his battle with Tiger at Torrey I got a little misty-eyed. I was happy to see him win a couple of skins, and his putt on the final hole was better than Ames or Mickelson's - and Rocco was further out.

K.J. Choi deserves all of the credit for consistently striping the ball down the fairway, hitting solid approach shots and then making the putts. The kind of boring golf that doesn't earn the adoration of many beer swilling Nascar fans, but wins tournaments. He made the putt that mattered most, I only wish it had mattered more.

Australian Masters
One final note about the weekend: John Daly missed the cut at the Australian Masters, shooting 76, 73 to end up +5 after two rounds and exit the tournament twelve strokes off of the pace. This, less than a week after he shot a final-round 62 at the Hong Kong Open. I wonder if that was what the tournament officials had in mind when they extended Daly the invitation to play again? Seriously. Were they just trying to drum up PR for their event, extending an olive branch to the man who dissed them, or simply milking the public's fascination with train wrecks?

Because you missed it: Rod Pampling and Marcus Fraser battled it out for three playoff holes, making heroic putts from no man's land, before Pampling finally won. 

 

Topics: Golf , Monday Morning Caddyshack , PGA Tour