What is a Skins Game?
Skins is a golf format played by three or four golfers. In a Skins game, the winner of a hole wins a Skin which is normally equivalent to a sum of money. The name of the game comes from the leather pouches – ie the Skin – which money was kept in. In effect, each hole is being played for a bag of money, or a ‘Skin’. Values of the Skin for each hole are declared in advance of the game. Sometimes each hole is worth the same Skin, but in some Skins games the value of Skins increase for the later holes.
If a hole is won outright, then the player winner wins the Skin. If the hole is not won outright that Skin is carried over till the next hole and all the players in the game can compete for that Skin regardless of how well they had done on the previous hole. This carrying over continues until a hole is won outright, so a hole can have many Skins riding on it.
Tactics
Skins tend to favour bold, attacking play as you are rarely punished for having an absolute horror hole. But you are often rewarded if you can shoot low on a hole. Therefore it encourages players to play risk-reward golf. It also tends to favour the occasionally brilliant player over the steady player. The golfer who makes half the holes in birdie and half in double bogey is likely to win more Skins that the player who pars all 18 holes.
Back It Up Skins
In Back It Up Skins, instead of pocketing the prize, you can "back it up". If you do that, the next Skin is worth double if you win it, whilst the Skin you had won but laid on the next hole, is also worth double if you win it. If another player wins the hole, they just win the original value of the two holes.
In simple terms, if Alex wins the first hole with a cash value of £1 and decides to back it up, then they would be playing for Skins worth £2 each on hole two. If Alex wins again, he gets £4.
However, if Bill wins the second hole, Bill gets two Skins worth £1 each and John gets nothing because he lost the Skin he won on the first hole. If there is no outright winner of hole two, each Skin gets moved forward to the third hole at its original value.
Skins in pro golf
Tiger Woods, Tom Watson, John Daly and Freddie Couples at the 1996 Skins Game at Rancho La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, California.
Professionals will often play Skins away from the main circuit, a way to sharpen their games against one another. From 1983 to 2008, The Skins Game was an unofficial money event on the PGA Tour which took place in either November or December each year at the end of the official PGA Tour season.
An example of how the Skins were valued at the 2008 event looked like this - The total prize money was $1million, with $25,000 on each of holes 1-6; $50,000 for holes 7-12; $70,000 for hole 13-17 and $200,000 on the final hole.
Fred Couples was the main man in the Skins game, he won the event five times and pocketed over $4 million in 11 starts.
Do professional golfers play Skins?
There is no longer a Skins game on the PGA Tour. There was an annual game from 1983 to 2008 which was recognised by the PGA Tour but did not count towards the official money list. Tiger Woods played in it 1996-1998, but never won the event.
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