It was 17 years in the making.
The Skins Game, once a Thanksgiving tradition for 25 years, returned Friday for the first time since 2008. Keegan Bradley, Xander Schauffele, Shane Lowry and Tommy Fleetwood teed it up at Panther National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., live starting at 9 a.m. ET on Amazon Prime.
And Bradley—in wind that reached 30 mph—got a bit of Ryder Cup revenge, winning in record fashion over a pair of European team members.
He banked $2.1 million, the most in the event’s history. Fleetwood, meanwhile, collected $1.7 million; Lowry made $200,000 and Schauffele, in the most viral moment of the made-for-TV spectacle, held a big fat check for $0 when it was all over.
The original Skins Game debuted in 1983 on NBC with Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Tom Watson, with Vin Scully handling play-by-play. In the ’80s, the Skins Game rivaled the Masters for the highest-rated golf event of the year, but as silly season competitions became more prevalent and prize money on the PGA Tour ballooned, interest eventually waned, despite Tiger Woods’s participation. That led to its euthanization in 2008 after LG pulled its title sponsorship.
Keegan Bradley secures the win at @the_skins_game with $2.1 million. 🏆 pic.twitter.com/yb8X2oohMw
— Sports on Prime Canada (@SportsOnPrimeCA) November 28, 2025
But in its reboot, the production leaned heavily on its tradition, even though it abandoned the Palm Springs desert. And trying to recapture the original Skins Game’s magic was always going to be a fishing trip.
So is the sequel here to stay? Here are four takeaways.
The U.S. Ryder Cup captain’s redemption
If there was one storyline regarding the champion that was going to have some legs, it was Bradley emerging victorious.
The 39-year-old has admitted the past two months have been hard after captaining the U.S. Ryder Cup team to a loss in September at Bethpage Black.
In the trash-talk-filled Black Friday morning a few months later, the Ryder Cup was a central theme.
“I have just spent the last few months breaking Keegan Bradley’s heart,” Lowry joked.
Then, Bradley put on a clinic (maybe he should have been the Ryder Cup’s first playing captain since Palmer in 1963), winning 11 skins.
However, he’d give back all of his winnings for a U.S. Ryder Cup win.
If the Skins Game Part II is here to stay, playing into storylines from earlier in the year is smart. That will make the end result worth something, even if it’s manufactured.
Amazon’s first foray into golf production falls flat
“Quite frankly, when you open up with Jack and Arnie … you’ve got one way to go—and that’s down.”
That was two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange, who competed in the Skins Game as a player and later as a broadcaster with ABC, discussing the event’s demise with Sports Illustrated last year.
Not to be overly critical, but Amazon’s production felt flat at times compared to Skins of yesteryear, which Strange called a “must-watch spectacle on TV.”
Starting at 9 a.m. was always going to be an uphill climb. With a majority of the country still in a food coma or hungover, how many people were setting their alarms to catch this? Especially at 6 a.m. on the West Coast.
It makes sense that the producers liked the idea of it being on Amazon Prime. It’s the biggest shopping day of the year, and the streaming service also showcased an NFL game and two NBA games on the same day. Clumping them together as a full day of sports was a good marketing scheme.
However, part of the original Skins Game’s lore was showcasing players’ personalities like never before, with the broadcast not being a typical meat-and-potatoes golf telecast. Nowadays, the appetite for that isn’t as strong as players are plenty well-known.
Mostly with on-course reporter Colt Knost there were walk-and-talks galore, and the players wore microphones. Sure, the interviews were fun and light-hearted, but there are walk-and-talks in nearly every round of every PGA Tour event.
The broadcast lacked a big-event feel, even if it was just an exhibition. Not that it was going to mirror the WM Phoenix Open, but the gallery was sparse. And there was seldom creative camera work by today’s standards.
Andrew Catalon and Peter Jacobson were fine in the booth. They had interviews with Annika Sorenstam, Justin Thomas (who was originally supposed to play and is a co-designer of the course) and Fred Couples, known as “Mr. Skins” for his previous success in the event, but all didn’t have much substance. Couples was supposed to do introductions on the first tee; however, he didn’t realize until last week that he’d have to fly to Florida for it. Therefore, all we got was a mere phone call (without a video, like Sorenstam).
Perhaps getting one of the big names from the Skins’ first iteration on-site would have enhanced the reboot’s magnitude.
Big money isn’t special anymore
In 1989, Strange earned $265,000 by triumphing in the Skins Game, $65,000 more than what he collected by winning his second straight U.S. Open five months earlier.
The event boasted money the sport had never seen. And missing a putt for over $200,000 was enough to spark a visceral reaction from Nicklaus.
TOMMY FLEETWOOD WINS $1.125M ON THE FINAL HOLE 💰#BlackFridayGameday | @the_skins_game pic.twitter.com/pS9l7KPQTr
— Sports on Prime (@SportsonPrime) November 28, 2025
It’s unfair to keep comparing the sequel to the original, but in 2025, it was going to be hard to have viewers on the edge of their seats to see if Bradley was going to hole a putt for a lump sum of cash.
He still did that, though. On No. 13, he made a 7-footer for $900,000, because money from the prior three holes carried over. That was the most in Skins history for a single hole before Fleetwood topped that a few holes later, winning $1,125,000.
For context, Bradley collected $3.6 million for winning June’s Travelers Championship, one of eight PGA Tour signature events with a $20 million purse. That Sunday, Bradley played in the final group with Fleetwood, who bogeyed the final hole, as Bradley birdied, to finish T3 and bank $1.76 million.
And Fleetwood took home $10 million in August when he won the Tour's FedEx Cup.
The biggest loser leaves as a winner
Schauffele was the biggest loser of the Skins Game. He also might have been the biggest winner.
Despite collecting $0 as the betting favorite, he showcased his personality the most. Who knew the two-time major champion was so whimsical?
Big pay day for the X man 💸@The_Skins_Game | @XSchauffele pic.twitter.com/XdHAOB477m
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 28, 2025
Early on, when Lowry missed a putt, he quipped, “straight from the water slide.” A little later, he did a perfect Sam Burns impression. Afterward, Thomas revealed Schauffele does an Adam Scott impersonation, too. Eventually, Knost got the Californian to try impersonation of the Australian.
On the 18th green, when Schauffele was handed a giant $0 check, he took it in stride, disclosing, “This is actually the first check I’ve ever gotten. I’m gonna frame this in the living room.
"That’s motivation. Probably the last Skins Game I ever play, to be honest."
“No, it’s not, you’re already coming back,” Knost said, “we already agreed on that.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Four Takeaways From the Skins Game’s Return on Amazon Prime.
