KA'ANAPALI, Maui — Birdies flew at a rapid rate in Royal Ka'anapali's debut as host of the 21st Wendy's Champions Skins Game. Ironically, two pars won it for Fuzzy Zoeller and Peter Jacobsen yesterday.

They were the first pars to win holes in four years and only the sixth and seventh in history. In the skins format, a hole can only be won outright; ties force a cash carryover to the next hole. It was the first time that two holes had been won with par in the same event.

Shut out but not shut up on the first nine holes Saturday, two of golf's most loquacious players rallied yesterday to win six skins and $320,000. They played well enough on the big-money day, along with Gary Player and Loren Roberts, and Arnold Palmer and Jay Haas, to shut out Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson over the final 10 holes.

The defending champions actually won more skins (eight) than Zoeller and Jacobsen, but Nicklaus and Watson grabbed all theirs Saturday. They set a first-day record of $270,000, with Roberts and Player winning the $30,000 first hole. Yesterday, before some 500 spectators on a drop-dead gorgeous Maui day, the ante went up and Zoeller and Jacobsen scooped up.

"It's a crazy game," Zoeller said. "Yesterday we played very well. There was one hole we were not in, the rest we were, there were a lot of ties. It was Jack's and Tom Watson's day. Jack holed out from the bunker and made two very good birdie putts. Today was another day. Golf is a crazy game. Guys were missing putts and we had the opportunity to make a couple and it blossomed from there."

Added Jacobsen, who had a hip replacement and two back surgeries last year: "Momentum is intangible but it's for real.

"Par winning a hole is odd but when it happened (at No. 11) the momentum went to us. We played great from there. We won 14 and we were in every hole."

Palmer and Haas were shut out, but the other teams all had a shot at winning on the $100,000 final hole after Roberts drained a 20-foot birdie putt for $150,000 and three skins on the 17th. He and Player had seven birdies but could win just four skins; the eightsome combined for 19 birdies over two days — four more than last year at Wailea Gold.

With a two-club Kona wind transforming the traditionally tough 18th into a monster, Nicklaus and Zoeller were the only ones to find the fairway on the final hole of regulation. Watson followed with a brilliant approach shot to 12 feet, but Nicklaus missed a putt that would have won it — moments after Zoeller nearly holed a 60-footer.

Wendy's Champions Skins went to overtime for the 17th time and all four teams found the fairway this time. But Haas, trying to hit 3-wood 230 yards into the wind, found the water. From 220 yards, Roberts pulled it out of bounds.

Zoeller was 185 yards away and hit it to the green, 35 feet from the hole. Nicklaus, about 10 yards closer, hit into the bunker and Watson's sand shot was heavy, leaving some 22 feet for par.

Jacobsen nearly holed his long birdie putt. "The caddies and Fuzzy all said it might be a little quick," he recalled. "I said, 'I got it.' One of the difficult things about hitting downhill and into the grain is judging speed, but actually this was a little easier because it went up a little slope to the ledge and dropped off. I tried to get it to the edge and let gravity take it. It was the perfect speed. l thought I made it."

It stopped a few inches past the hole — "He got it in my range," said Zoeller, whose last win was the 2004 MasterCard Championship on the Big Island. "I can make those."

Nicklaus also hit his par putt pure, but was fooled by the strong grain in the grass and missed left.

"His first putt (at 18) went straight and we both read it to go right," Watson said. "We couldn't believe it either of us, on two putts. The first putt Jack said he pulled and the second he hit it where he wanted to and it stayed left. Live and learn. If we're here next year and have the same putt we'll play it to go left. We will remember that putt.

"We had opportunities yesterday and made them. Today, we were not so fortunate."

Senior skins switched to an alternate-shot team format in 2006, adding a relatively youthful element to an event that has succeeded on the immense drawing power of the 78-year-old Palmer, Player, 72, and Nicklaus, 68.

Yesterday the (relatively) new kids on the block came out of nowhere, breaking through when Jacobsen's 8-foot par putt earned two skins and $80,000 on the 11th hole.

Jacobsen, who turns 54 in nine days, and Zoeller, 56, had each played this event once before and were shut out. But after breaking through, they cashed in on another three skins and $140,000 three holes later on Zoeller's 6-footer for the team's third straight birdie.

"These guys are Hall of Famers, legends," Jacobsen said. "Once we got past their resumes on the first nine holes we settled in."

Against some of the greatest players golf will ever see. Jacobsen and Zoeller are old enough to appreciate that.

"What an honor to play with Jack, Gary, Arnie and Tom Watson," Zoeller said. "They are very special in our eyes. They are the guys who made golf what it is. I hope the young guys growing up open their eyeballs and see that."

NOTES

Jack Nicklaus has won a Seniors Skins' record $2,430,000. "I don't know why I bother to play any place else," he joked Saturday.

Nicklaus also said Arnold Palmer, who has played in all but one of these, told him he was "so close to not going to Hawai'i this year."

"I just laughed," Nicklaus recalled. "Arnold Palmer said that for 20 years. I'm sure that Arnold Palmer will go as long as he can stand up."

Ten percent of the winnings went to charity, with half to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and the other half to the players' favorite charity.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.