Nothing funny about silly money
Among the many unique things proponents of professional golf like to point out is that the athletes who play the game for pay are different than those who toil in other sports because golf has no guaranteed contracts.
In fact, there is no guarantee a player is going to bring home anything when he or she tees it up on a Thursday. Don't make the 36-hole cut, don't get paid. It's as simple as that. No 10-year, $250 million deals here.
But pro golfers -- particularly the men -- do have a little annuity built into their schedule called the Silly Season. And no one is better during the Silly Season than Fred Couples.
Freddie did it again on Sunday, winning the Skins Game for a record fifth time and taking home $640,000, or about a 50 percent bonus on top of the $1.3 million he earned during the real PGA Tour season. The tour, in trying to better brand its post-season ATM events, tries to steer people away from the term Silly Season in favor of the phrase Challenge Season. But hey, it is just silly when a guy can play two holes well -- as Couples did at Trilogy Golf Club -- and walk away the big winner. That's not to say it's not competitive and fun to watch, it's just to say it's, well, silly.
The Skins Game is made for Fred Couples. Here's a guy who's so laid back you sometimes get the feeling he could fall asleep between shots. Here's a guy who after trying to hit an iron out of a bunker left-handed at the British Open, only to drive the ball deeper into the sand and eventually make a very large number, casually said to a reporter, "I made a blunder" and then asked if the writer had a Seattle Mariners score from the night before. It's safe to say Couples treats life like a hot bath, easing one toe in and then casually immersing himself in events by making as little waves as possible.
Take how he became the big winner at the Skins Game. On the tenth hole he rolled in a birdie putt to win an eight-skin carryover worth $300,000. Then on the fourth extra hole, in a standoff with Tiger Woods, he captured three skins with a value of $340,000 after Woods hit his drive into the water. Now that's Freddie's kind of competition -- play well for two holes and win $640,000. This is, after all, a man who makes the Easter Bunny look uptight.
When Couples won the 1992 Masters after a blade of grass on No. 12 in Sunday's final round kept his ball from rolling backward into the water there were very few among golf observers -- me among them -- who thought that would be his only major championship. And there were likely fewer who figured he would win only six more regular PGA Tour events -- a number he has more than doubled in Silly Season victories since that Masters triumph. A bad back certainly contributed to Couples' reduced productivity on the PGA Tour, but what explains his astonishing success in the extra-curriculum events? By the most modest count, Couples has won more times in the post-season than he has won during the season. Let's take a look.
Freddie has 15 PGA Tour victories, the most recent came at the 2003 Shell Houston Open. He has won, by my conservative calculations, at least 17 times in limited-field, non-official tour tournaments. Couples' career earnings on the PGA Tour exceed $16.5 million. That's pretty impressive. Almost as much as Alex Rodriguez made this season for not winning a World Series with the New York Yankees, and last season for finishing last with the Texas Rangers. Rodriguez, however, doesn't have a chance to pick up a few million extra in pick-up games after the season is over.
In his 11 appearances in the Skins Game alone Couples has earned $3,515,000. Not bad for a made-for-TV event. Now let's consider that his booty in the desert is only part of what he picks up after the tournaments quit counting. Check out this resume:
SKINS GAME: Winner in 1995, 1996, 1999, 20003 and 2004. WORLD CUP: Team winner in 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1995; Individual winner in 1994. HYUNDAI TEAM MATCHES: Winner in 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2001. SHARK SHOOTOUT: Winner in 1990, 1994 and 1999. WENDY'S THREE-TOUR CHALLENGE: Winner in 1994, 1996 and 1997.
In no manner of the truth am I saying I think Freddie cares more about Silly Season events than he does about the regular PGA Tour tournaments. But I do guess I am saying the Silly Season tournaments mesh perfectly with Freddie's laid-back style. The Skins Game is the supreme example. Under that format, where if two of the four participants tie a hole the skin carries over to the next hole for all four players, a player can gamble or mentally take a hole off and still not lose anything. There is not the strain of grinding for 18 holes over four consecutive days. Hit a couple of good shots at the right time and you can walk away with all the money -- just like Freddie did on Sunday.
If the vote was taken right now, Fred Couples is probably not a Hall of Fame player. Fifteen victories and one major just doesn't cut it. He does, however, have an important intangible going for him -- he is a nice guy, and that doesn't hurt when Hall of Fame voters vote. What will be interesting is whether or not his Silly Season record is viewed by voters as a plus or a minus. Are 17 victories on the off season an impressive achievement, or do they only serve to highlight the deficiencies of Couple real resume? Only time will tell on that one.
Meanwhile, the last I heard, the banks still take the checks -- silly or not.
Ron Sirak is the Executive Editor of Golf World magazine.
