Why do we play Skins as “gross” (versus “net”) and in flights (vs overall)?
This was a toughie at the time. At one point in the mid-90s, we briefly considered converting to “Net Skins across all flights” instead of “Gross Skins within Flights” … thinking that this would increase interest because the $/skin would be higher and presumably everyone would have an equal chance to win. (for the uninitiated, “gross skins” means your actual score on the hole is compared to everone else you’re competing with, and you can only win a skin if your raw score is lower than everyone else playing against you; where “net skins” means your handicap strokes are subtracted off before you try to compare scores). I even went so far as to program it in our Tournament Workbook (where all our scoring is done) thinking this would turn out to be a popular thing. We tried it in one tournament. The result was confusion. People who got a natural birdie on a hole ended up losing the hole to someone who had 2 handicap strokes and a par (net eagle) on the same hole. We even had some net dou
