The morning after the big feast, with tryptophan still coursing through my veins, I awoke early to indulge in some form of pilgrim consumption early on. Thanksgiving Day wouldn’t have known: live golf streaming on a personal device.
What a difference a few decades make.
More than 40 years ago, in an era when Vin Scully still called the shots, I tuned in to the inaugural Game Skins in a small black and white in my college dorm room, flapping the bunny ears for better reception. Now the event was playing on my laptop, broadcast over the air on a platform owned — fittingly for Black Friday — by the world’s largest online retailer.
Sport is business and business is sport. Always has been. This was quite clear in 1983, when Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Gary Player tied him to the desert mountain in Arizona. That Skins girl had her sponsors, her signage, her corporate footprint. But compared to Friday’s replay — the Capital One Skins 2025 game — it felt about as strange as a trip to the mall. The entire purse at the time was $360,000 — about a quarter of what the last hole was worth this round — and the whole enterprise had the air of a vacation getaway. You tuned in for golf, but also for desert sun and banter between four aging legends. Although the first Skins was recorded, edited and aired over the course of two days, it still gave the feeling of being stuck in something unspeakable in the pre-December lull.
Then he left. After 2008, the event disappeared for 17 years, a hiatus long enough to overcome an entire generation of fans. The decision to bring it back marked a departure from so much televised golf these days, which, with its TGLs and YouTube influencer tournaments, is so blatantly aimed at younger generations. This Skins was more like a nod to Greybeards, a gentle stroll down memory lane.
The broadcast leaned into that nostalgia. It opened with highlights from the inaugural edition—retro graphics, Sansabelts, a silver-haired Arnold Palmer—as if to invite us to remember not just the four-player contest, but the era that spawned it. Interviews with players from past generations noted the coverage. Annika Sorenstam called to remember when. So did Fred Couples, who aired an adorable out-of-time moment revealing he’d been offered to handle the first introductions until he realized the event was in Florida, not Palm Springs.
Either way, all the hindsight helped throw the present into sharper relief. Couples summed it up best: at this event, you’re not really worried about how you play. All you are paying attention to is money. As a fan, you can prioritize the moolah, too, by placing a live bet on the action. DraftKings had appearances during the commercial break.
None of them were reasons to be unhappy with this year’s actors. Xander Schauffele, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Keegan Bradley are extremely likable players who are still in their prime, still capable of making shooting plays. There was a bit of that. Bradley played steady and walked away with more leather. A Rusty Schauffele was shut out, but won the entertainment category with a quirky sense of humor and a soulless, improvisational impression by Sam Burns.
For all its content behind it, the event also had a recent history to draw from in the form of the Ryder Cup, which added a hint of spice to the joke. Lowry couldn’t resist a playful jab at Bradley: “I’ve just spent the last few months breaking Keegan Bradley’s heart,” he said after draining a birdie putt to halve the second hole. Every viewer knew the context, regardless of their age.
The commentary, meanwhile, was mostly syrupy, suitable for a TV dessert, though it could have done without a sugar coating. Peter Jacobsen, a pleasant presence and himself a veteran of many kicks and laughs, tried to talk about the intensity of the nerves, as if this was the master and not an easy payday. If only Fleetwood hadn’t winged it at the last minute from his home in Dubai and tired him out without bothering with a practice round.
In addition to any jet lag, he had to get up early to make his time, not because golf fans were cheering for dawn patrols, but because the event had to be over before the Bears-Eagles game started. Even big-money quarterbacks are chicken feed compared to the economic strength of the NFL.
Do I sound like an old curmudgeon?
I don’t want to. Mostly, what I feel is melancholy, which shouldn’t be shocking. By helping us restore the way things used to be, nostalgia also highlights what we feel we’ve lost. I’m not naive. I don’t believe the early 80’s were an era of innocence, or that Jack and Arnie weren’t in it for the money too. Was the world then really so different from what it is today? Maybe not. But I had seen it less. Come to think of it, maybe what I lacked the most was my youth, something that no amount of skin could ever buy me.
