It's Skins Game time again

There'll be plenty of TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
this weekend when defending champions Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson take on three groups of old rivals at the 24th Kaanapali Champions Skins Game.

There always are. It's that kind of event

The teams the formidable Nicklaus and Watson pairing will be taking on this weekend at the Royal Kaanapali TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
on Maui, Hawaii, include Fuzzy Zoeller and Ben Crenshaw, Mark O'Meara and Bernhard Langer, and Nick Price and Fred Couples

Pairs playing alternative shots is the format for the competition and the prize fund is $770,000 with $30,000 up for grabs on holes Nos 1-6, $40,000 on holes No. 7-12, $50,00 on holes No. 13-17 and $100,000 for the 18th hole. '

The prize money on each hole is carried forward if no team wins the hole outright.

A decade ago, Nicklaus drained a 4-foot birdie putt on the final hole of regulation that would eventually cost him a TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
. The putt halved Gary Player and sent the contest into an extra hole which Hale Irwin won.

Player, who would have been $180,000 richer if Nicklaus missed, made another suggestion, followed by a wink: "Have you ever had anyone offer you $50,000 to miss a putt?"

Chi Chi Rodriguez won the first two Senior Skins games, at Turtle Bay and La Quinta before this made-for-TV contest moved to Mauna Lani in 1990 and stayed for 11 years.

In that first year, Arnold Palmer won $240,000. It was the biggest payday of his unparalleled golf career - and $7,000 more than he made in his best TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
on the regular tour.

The next year, Nicklaus drained a 35-foot eagle putt on the third playoff hole to win the game, nine skins and $285,000. There have been only four more eagles since - and three of those were by Nicklaus.

Palmer won the next two Senior Skins Games, but could not win again despite playing regularly until 2009.

Raymond Floyd then stepped up and won five Skins games in a row from 1994 to 1998.

Hale Irwin then got hot with three wins in four years with Gary Player in between making the biggest TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
in the event's history in 2000..

After being shut out for 60 holes over 11 years, Player sank an 18-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole to overtake Palmer, Nicklaus and Watson to win 4 skins and $220,000 in a reunion of the original Skins Game in 1983.

In 2003, Lee Trevino talked to all and sundry for six hours on the way to winning his only Senior Skins victory, making a 10-foot birdie putt on the third playoff hole to beat Irwin.

It his first skins Trevino in 10 years of trying.

The following year, Wendy's took over as title sponsor and promptly offered their winners a year's worth of TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
.

Palmer, 74, missed a 10-foot putt on the 18th that would have given him the game, $400,000 and all the burgers he could have eaten.

He missed and finished second to Watson - a decade younger than anyone else in the field of four.

Nicklaus picked up the biggest payday of his outstanding career in the following year and the new pairs format debuted a year later, with Floyd sinking a winning putt.

"I hit the ground and the ball at the same time," Floyd conceded. "In other words, I hit it fat."

He and partner Dana Quigley won a TaylorMade R11 TP Driver
then-record $410,000, which Quigley figured was the total of his salary over a 14-year career as a head pro at a club..

Two years ago, Zoeller and Crenshaw broke that record, splitting $530,000. That was all of $180,000 more than Nicklaus and Watson won last year.