SKINS GAME STILL A MARQUEE EVENT.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

The granddaddy of golf's offseason events returns for a 23rd consecutive year this week, when Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam, Fred Funk and Fred Couples complete in the Merrill Lynch Skins Game on Saturday and Sunday at Trilogy Golf Club in La Quinta.

The made-for-television event has showcased some of professional golf's finest and most popular players during its two-decade-plus history, and this Thanksgiving weekend will be no different.

Woods and Sorenstam, the finest tour players of their generation, have combined exceptional talent with exceptional work ethic to produce remarkably similar success on their respective tours.

Woods, who will turn 30 on Dec. 30, has achieved 46 PGA Tour victories and won another nine times in 22 international events, accumulating 10 major titles and six tour scoring titles, and he is on the verge of winning his seventh Player of the Year award after a six-win Tour season that included two major championships.

Sorenstam, 35, who picked up her eighth LPGA Tour Player of the Year award this year, has 66 Tour wins and another 13 international victories, has ranked first in scoring eight times and won nine majors - two this year, same as Woods.

Funk and Couples are longtime fan favorites for their easygoing style as well as driving skills that are the envy of amateurs everywhere. Couples, the 1992 Masters champion and a two-time Players champion, has seemingly effortless length off the tee, which has helped him win a record $3.175 million in his 11 Skins Games appearances. Funk, who won the Players this year, is as apparently comfortable finding fairways off the tee, offsetting lack of distance by leading the tour in driving accuracy eight times.

One of the subplots of this Skins Game will be the driving contest between Sorenstam and Funk, who said he has already heard the ribbing from Woods:

``He says, 'You better not let Annika outdrive you,' '' Funk said. ``I've already assumed she's going to outdrive me.''

``I'm not sure if I can do it,'' Sorenstam said, ``but obviously I'm going to tee it off and hit it as hard as I can.''

Mostly, the world's top woman golfer is just going to enjoy playing the men in another offseason event after seeing how a similar experience in a PGA Tour event - the 2003 Mastercard Colonial - dramatically upgraded her game.

Sorenstam failed to make the cut that week, but she survived the pressure of being the first woman in more than a half-century to play in a PGA Tour event. She won over the galleries with her spirit and grace, returned to the LPGA Tour with invaluable experience and has dominated the women's game ever since.

In 198 LPGA tournaments before she competed in the Colonial, Sorenstam won 22 percent of them. In 50 tournaments since then, she has won 46 percent of her starts - 23 victories that have moved her within reach of Kathy Whitworth's LPGA career win total of 88.

--Boot camp: Twenty-year area teaching professional Bob Cisco is drilling students in his 10th year of Short Game Boot Camps, which emphasize feel as the path to success in putting, chipping, pitching and bunker play.

Cisco, who has instructed on the PGA, LPGA and Champions tours, is working on his third instructional book and is instructional host on the ``Tee It Up'' radio golf show that airs Sunday mornings on 790-AM, conducts his boot camps for groups of 8-10 one weekend a month at Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale.

The son of two-time Kentucky state amateur champion Walter Cisco and brother of former Indiana University All-American Steven Cisco, Bob learned the game from both of them growing up and followed that pair of Indiana team captains on his own stint with the Hoosiers.

``I was the 6-7-8 man on the squad,'' said Cisco, who applied what he learned in the college game and from watching tour players practice to come up with a series of feel drills at his boot camps, where he said he tends to get students who shoot in the 90s who are looking to shave off 4-5 strokes.

``They know the long game is something they're not going to conquer completely, but they'd like to get to the point where they can be competitive in the short game,'' he said, ``and we give them a series of very simple drills to bring that out and help keep them sharp.''

For more information on the camp, call: [phone].

--Names in the game: Veteran area PGA Tour players Duffy Waldorf of Valencia and Steve Pate of Agoura Hills and former UCLA teammate Jay Delsing failed to advance past the second stage of the tour qualifying tournament last week. ... Bob E. Smith of the Barber Golf Center in Moorpark has been named Southern California PGA Senior Player of the Year for a second consecutive year. Griffith Park head professional Tom Barber won the Strausberg Award and Paula Olsen of the Tregnan Golf Center in Griffith Park was named Junior Golf Leader in other SCPGA honors announced this week. ... First-year Scholl Canyon men's club member John Van Leeuwen shot 60-65-125 to win the club championship by a stroke over Dave Davis on the par-60 executive course in Glendale.

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no caption (Annika Sorenstam)

Scott Halleran/Getty Images

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ON THE GREEN

BY DAVE SHELBURNE