Beyond the winner Austin Eckroat, the other fairy tale in Palm Beach has starred David Skinns. Unlike the champion, this 42-year-old English veteran has not been able to eat the partridges, at least not all of them, but nobody expects to see him collapsed on a couch in the clubhouse of the PGA National licking his wounds. It’s not his style.
Skinns, who was in the star match on the last day alongside Shane Lowry, not only has he not been able to win the tournament, but he has also been left out of the Arnold Palmer Invitational by a solitary stroke. Painful. He needed to make approach and putt on the 18th to get into the first Signature Event of his career and he has not been able. It was a more than affordable up and down, frank, about 26 meters from the flag, but he has not been fine. The chip has been very short, just under five meters and the putt has also escaped him.
The difference has been notable. With the birdie he would have been second tied with Min Woo Lee and Van Rooyen. With the par he has been fourth tied with four other players. He has left behind no less than 336,750 dollars and the Arnold Palmer. Painful. “Yesterday I was very nervous. I thought I would handle it better, but I felt very uncomfortable, I don’t know if it was the pressure or the long wait to go out to play. Today, however, I felt much better, I am happy with the game and I only regret not having done better that recovery on the 18th,” he commented as soon as he finished.
However, today is just another detour on Skinns’ long and tortuous path to reach the elite. Don’t think this is going to discourage him. Not someone who in 2017 went home in the middle of a tournament to accompany his wife in the birth of their second child. It was not just any tournament. He was playing the Albertsons Boise, one of the last events of the year of the Korn Ferry Tour. He had made 69 and 66 strokes the first two days, was ninth and had shot the PGA Tour card. Skinns had been a professional since 2005 and had taken twelve years to create that opportunity. He did not hesitate to let it pass.
Skinns was a standout amateur player. He went to study in the United States with a scholarship at a time, beginning of the century, when it was not so common. He was in Tennessee and stood out very soon. He was chosen as the best first-year player of the NCAA, best player of the SEC (South Eastern Conference) and won three times, including the SEC Championship, defeating JB Holmes in a head-to-head.
The transition to professionalism, as in so many other cases, was not a bed of roses, but he never threw in the towel. He fought in hundreds of mini tour tournaments. He won three times and was chosen as the best player of the Hooters Tour in 2008. There he competed against players like Kevin Kisner, Gary Woodland or Russell Knox. The others were arriving, but he never got the opportunity. At the time of truth, it was tails.
He did not land on the Korn Ferry Tour until 2015 and it took another six years to reach the PGA Tour for the first time, at the Fortinet Championship in 2021. He once calculated his journey to the PGA Tour: he played in two dozen states in America and traveled more than one and a half million miles by car and plane over 20 years.
For all these reasons, nobody doubts that today’s approach and putt is going to undermine Skinns’ morale. “I have never lost faith,” he says. “I have always believed that it is up to me to find the way”. He will keep looking. Next stop: Puerto Rico. “I know that the next time I find myself in a situation like this I will do better. That is the most positive thing I take from this week”.
The five players who have qualified for the Arnold Palmer Invitational through the Aon Swing 5 (their performances in Mexico and Palm Beach) are Sami Valimaki, Stephan Jaeger, Justin Lower and CT Pan.
