WAILEA, Maui — It took five hours to crown the tag team champion at the latest version of the Wendy's Champions Skins Game yesterday. The final revolution of Raymond Floyd's $410,000 putt to win only seemed to take that long.

While partner Dana Quigley held his breath and Floyd flopped over his putter, knocked off his hat and looked down with an expression halfway between agony and ecstasy, his putt seemed to stop on the lip of Wailea Gold's 17th hole. It tumbled in, giving the "young guns" of the new team format nine skins and the championship.

"That putt I'll always remember," said Floyd, 63, who won two PGA Championships, a Masters and the 1986 U.S. Open. "People always ask me about one shot in my career I remember and I always have trouble recalling a specific shot, but I'll always remember that putt right there. And I'll always remember it because I don't know how it went in.

"I got over it with a wonderful feeling. I was very relaxed, I was calm and confident about the line. I told Dana I was going to make it. I did the usual routine and then I hit it heavy."

Floyd said he hit the ball and ground simultaneously — "in other words, I hit the putt a little fat, and dead straight." Or, as Quigley described it, "an 8-foot putt and he hit it 7 feet, 11 inches. ... This was God's will to get it to the hole."

Floyd added the last skin — and $100,000 — without all the drama by drilling a 12-foot birdie putt into the heart of the first hole of sudden death after no team won the 18th outright. He and Quigley split $510,000. Floyd won a record five straight senior skins games from 1994 to '98, but hadn't played since 1999 when it was still at Mauna Lani.

His flair for the skins' dramatic — Quigley called him the "Skins Icon" — ended a marathon alternate-shot round that had Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson winning the only Skins in the first 16 holes. And, it put the teams of Arnold Palmer and Peter Jacobsen, and Gary Player and Hale Irwin, out of their own versions of skins golf hell.

Player and Irwin flirted with greatness, but instead missed a combined 20 feet of putts on three greens worth $480,000. They were shut out, as were Jacobsen and Palmer, the sentimental choice of a surprisingly large Monday gallery who could never put it together in the first year of the team alternate-shot format.

Floyd and Quigley, too, were treading water for the first 16 holes as Watson and Nicklaus teed off first and never let the honors loose. Floyd and Quigley rarely put themselves in position to cash in while Nicklaus drained birdie putts from 15 feet on the first hole and 12 on the eighth to give him and Watson a $260,000 cushion on an elite field that has won 561 events.

Palmer and Jacobsen both said the 66-year-old Nicklaus, who has teed it up about 10 times since retiring at last summer's British Open, played the best golf of the eightsome.

"He drove the ball well, drove it very consistently and he kept the ball in play and he putted well," Palmer said."

Added Jacobsen: "It's hard to get in the flow with this format so to pick out who had the best round is very difficult. But I do think you're looking for the player who hit the most timely shots and that was Jack. He made a lot of putts. He drove the ball as well as I've seen him drive it in 10 years."

Nicklaus' greatness would not be enough. As birdies grew rarer and frustration grew, the teams halved their way through the next eight holes.

Jacobsen and Palmer missed four straight putts on the first hole for a snap shot of their day. The high point would be Jacobsen jokingly giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a volunteer Quigley hit with an errant shot at No. 16.

Irwin and Player couldn't buy a break, or a timely putt. Quigley covered Player's birdie putt on the fourth and Irwin missed a short one for $120,000 on the next hole. Watson covered their birdie on the seventh, leading to Nicklaus' big payoff. Palmer covered Irwin's birdie on the next hole.

The back nine was even more irritating, with Player pulling a six-footer worth $120,000 on the 11th, Irwin's chip shot lipping out on the 13th, Player lipping out from long range on the 15th green and Irwin barely missing from 12 feet on the next hole for $360,000.

And then came Floyd, who cashed in on the biggest one-hole payoff in senior skins history almost by accident, on what Quigley figured was his partner's first putt on the back nine.

That quirk of fate was part of the new format's charm. Those that spoke after the round all enjoyed the alternate-shot competition. Nicklaus joked he couldn't get in the flow if he "hit a shot every 20 seconds" so that was not a factor. Floyd liked the way every golfer always had a shot at making an instant impact.

"I think the format is incredible. It was well thought-out," Floyd said. "The skins format has been the same for so long I think it was getting a bit stale. I think this will infuse some life into it."

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.