Is Fred Couples the Greatest Player in Skins Game History? We Asked Him.

He’s sketchy on the details, but when Fred Couples says he misses the Skins Game there’s little doubt his memory is working just fine. The man dubbed “Mr. Skins” recalls playing in at least “five or six” editions of the four-player, 18-hole exhibitions that ran from 1983 through 2008. When informed he teed it up 14 times and won five, he simply says, “Wow.” After a pause he adds, “Seriously, I mean, it goes by so fast.”

Image Credit: Fred Couples tees off during the 1996 Skins Game at Rancho La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, California. Couples won the Skins Game finishing with 9 Skins and $280,000. (Craig Jones/Allsport)

It adds up quickly too. The event offered a cash prize per hole (expressed as the value of a fur pelt or a “skin”). If nobody won the hole, the prize would roll over to the next one. Four or five ties in a row could lead to weighty sums and heavy drama riding on a single putt. Couples made his share. Over the years, he took a total of 77 skins and pocketed $4.2 million, which works out to something like $20,000 per hole (not including playoff holes). Still, he points out, “the 4.2 today, don’t laugh, that’d probably be like $40 million.”

Maybe we’ll find out over the next dozen or so years, because after a 17-year hiatus, the Skins Game returns. Keegan Bradley, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Xander Schauffle will battle it out on Panther National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for a total purse of $4 million on Nov. 28. Like the old days, everyone will be mic’d up and having fun, but there will be a twist. This time, each player will start with a $1 million pot, and they’ll have to pay a portion of it to whomever wins a hole. Win all 18 and take home the entire 4M; fail to win any holes and leave with zip.

“I’m looking forward to watching it,” Couples says. “It’s Thanksgiving weekend. It was always on early here in California, and any time you get these kind of guys together, it’s gonna be a good show. It’s hard to pull off. Back when I played, everybody wanted to play, but nowadays, everyone asks for a pile of money, and they don’t go across the street unless they get it. So, I think this format is better, where you start out with a certain pool of money and try to hang onto it.”

RELATED: A Brief History of The Skins Game

The original might have been less creative, but it had other things going for it. For starters, it occupied space on one of the three networks in a time before cable reigned and it featured legends of the game playing for dollar amounts that impressed even them. The first year, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson faced off, and on one hole Palmer sunk a putt worth $100,000. Up to that point in his career, he’d never won more than $55,000 in any tournament. The 1983 Masters champion (Seve Ballesteros) only made $90,000. Arnie’s putt meant something to viewers, because it meant something even to Palmer.

In 2025, seven PGA Tour events paid out at least $4 million just to the winner, so even though “a couple of ties could lead to a $1 million hole,” the new Skins Game needs more than cash to draw viewers. Couples doesn’t think that will be an issue. “They were so much fun to play in that I never looked at the dollar signs,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, we made a lot of money on the regular tour in the ‘90s, but then you could go in the offseason, and if you had a nice couple of tournaments, you could make a check. But part of it was I really enjoyed playing with some of my buddies. You’ve got to laugh at yourself in this thing. You know, you might miss a putt, and, okay, maybe it costs you some money, but you got to have fun. That that's the key, not that I did it all the time, I was not a comedian, but you got a lot of smiles and you interacted with the fans if you won a hole. You showed off a little bit. That's what the Skins Game is all about.”

He has examples. He remembers playing with Palmer at Bull Run in ‘93. They came to a par 5 with a mogul-lined fairway. His shot ended up on a sidehill, where “I had 230 yards and the ball was probably chin high,” he says. “You’re in the Skins Game, so I said, Why wouldn't I? I made this baseball swing, and I knocked it on the green to about 25 feet.” He doesn’t remember if he won the hole, but he recalls feel of it. “You could play a way you never would in a tournament,” he says.

He particularly enjoyed playing with Payne Stewart, Paul Azinger and Davis Love III. “Azinger was always funny. One year we were playing, and there’s only four of you in the locker room, and Azinger looks into Payne’s locker. He says, ‘We're playing two days, and you've got like six pair of shoes here. What the hell are you doing?’”

In 2005, Couples played with Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam and Fred Funk. When Sorenstam outdrove Funk on the third hole, she made him pay off a bet by wearing a pink skirt for the rest of the hole. “On the green he bent over to read his putt and Tiger’s reading it too, and he says, ‘Looks like it’s two balls out,’” Couples says. “That was comical but a little dicey to say on TV.”

Image Caption: Fans on the first tee hold photos of players Fred Funk, Fred Couples, Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam during final round of the 2005 Merrill Lynch Skins Game at Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta in La Quinta, California November 27, 2005. (Photo by Steve Grayson/PGA)

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He thinks this year’s group will deliver on that part of the event. He calls Fleetwood “probably the No. 2 player in the world right now,” who “may be hilarious.” Bradley, meanwhile “is energetic and when something good happens, you’ll know about it.” Lowry, a last-minute replacement after Justin Thomas bowed out following back surgery, “has kind of got that happy-go-lucky look, and he’s a great, great player who'll probably do some damage in this thing.”

He likes the “X-man” as an X factor. Couples plays often with fellow SoCal homies Patrick Cantlay and Schauffle, who he calls the quiet little assassin. “If you've been around X-Man, he's one of the funniest guys around. You don’t see him smiling and laughing a lot, but he's got that way of saying something, and he doesn't laugh, but it's very, very funny. I think he could be the leader of the band of those three guys, someone who can stir the pot.”

As he’s talking, Couples remembers that he also played in the Canadian Skins Game “six or seven times.” A quick fact check reveals he played 11 times north of the border, winning five for another $1.2 million in Canadian dollars. That revelation leads to an obvious question. Does Mr. Skins think he should have gotten the nod for this year’s reboot? “When Justin had his surgery, I was like, where was my call?” he says, laughing. “I was disappointed. I still play pretty well.”

There used to be a senior skins game. That died in 2011, but if the young guns version does well, who knows what they’ll resuscitate next year.

*The Skins Game will stream on Amazon Prime starting at 9 a.m. ET on Nov. 28. Skratch’s parent company, ProShop Inc., is a co-owner and co-producer of the event.