The game of Skins is brilliant, both for how fun and cruel it can be.
There might be three or four of you in a group, and if a hole is halved even just by two players, the next hole is worth two skins, then three skins if the next one is halved, and so on.
You could have two players making birdie after birdie and halving holes, then someone having a stinker, swooping in with one moment of magic to steal the glory.
It used to be the format used for an off-season exhibition event in the USA, featuring some of the sport’s most celebrated figures. It is back in 2025 for the first time since 2008, and will feature the rather random group of Keegan Bradley, Xander Schauffele, Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry.
It started in 1983, and started with a bang. The line-up of participants was remarkable: Tom Watson, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. But this fixture is now eternally remembered for a rules fiasco, including Watson and Player.
You might ask why a golf rules debate started in a silly season, Christmas lead-up knockaround, but these four stars were playing for good money and, as we all know, accusations of not following golf rules tend to follow people around in a sport of such principle and self-respect.
On the 16th hole at Desert Highlands in Scottsdale, Arizona, Watson was in the hole for par on this long par 3. Palmer was out of the hole, Nicklaus had a long putt for par, and Player was about 60 feet away off the green and due to hit his second shot.
As Player prepared to hit up, Watson believed that he saw the South African move a leaf by his ball. Player eventually got up and down, and the hole was halved, but Player went on to win the 17th hole and collected $150,000 thanks to a backlog of skins.
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When the round was over, Watson met with Player, Nicklaus and rules official Joe Dey on a road behind the 18th green, with Dave Anderson of the New York Times lurking in the background and listening to the conversation.
“Tom thought that I’d moved a leaf that I shouldn’t have,” Player said, reported in Anderson’s column, “but I told him I didn’t, and he accepted that. And that’s the way we left it.”
“I’m accusing you, Gary… you can’t do that… I’m tired of this… I wasn’t watching you, but I saw it,” is what Anderson heard Watson say. The five-time Open Championship winner was contending that Player couldn’t move the leaf as it wasn’t a loose impediment. Player maintained his innocence and said he behaved within the rules.
Anderson was asked not to run it, but he did. This was a story about alleged cheating that involved the game’s most storied figures.
On the day, Player won $170,000, which was the lion’s share of the $360,000 pot available. Watson only banked $10,000, less than Nicklaus’ $40,000 and dwarfed by Palmer’s $140,000.
“I was staggered,” Player wrote later. “Breaking the rules is, after all, the most heinous charge to be laid against any golfer. When it is aimed at a champion the repercussions can be monumental. It was a truly sorry affair in which the accusation was not made until I had left the course and the game was over.
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“The correct procedure would have been to raise the matter at the time. I was astonished that Tom did not adopt the correct procedure. I think what he did to me that day will haunt him for the rest of his life.”
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This wasn’t the first instance of suspected foul play in Player’s career. There is the story of the 1974 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, where in the final round, Player is rumoured to have not finished the 17th hole with the ball he had hit into thick rough.
Rumours also say that his caddie Alfred ‘Rabbit’ Dyer had dropped a ball for him in the rough when time was of the essence in the ball search. Another tale says that the ball that he actually hit into the rough was later found.
Player won the event by four shots and was the only player under par.
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