Matt Kuchar’s reputation as a gentle and immaculate pro golfer is gone. The 40-year-old veteran PGA Tour pro is now known for an all-time stiffing of a caddie, an unexpected controversy that’s become one of the biggest stories of the early golf year. The rumor of the offensive and disrespectful tip job bubbled up in mid-January on Twitter, as this kind of thing does now. But the amount, which is so low that it’s newsworthy, had not been substantiated until this week, when both the caddie and Kuchar confirmed the transaction from a late 2018 tournament in Mexico. With the story now substantiated, let’s go through the background, timeline, and what each party said this week on the record. Then we’ll draw the sweeping and damning conclusion about how this has been mishandled and what it does to Kuchar’s previously tidy image. Some Background Last November, Matt Kuchar won the Mayakoba Classic in Mexico. While Kuchar has always slotted high in the world rankings and posted consistent high finishes, it was his first win in four and a half years on the PGA Tour. The winner’s payout at the Mayakoba Classic was $1,296,000. This win brought Kuchar’s career on-course earnings to $47,089,107. He’s earned much more than that in off-the-course endorsement deals. He is among the top 10 in the PGA Tour’s career money leaders list. That career cash rank is thanks in large part to the aforementioned consistency of high finishes in the era of the Tiger Woods moneybath, when PGA Tour purses everywhere, even at lower-tier November events like the Mayakoba Classic, skyrocketed. Kuchar’s regular caddie, John Wood, did not make the trip to Mexico. Kuchar made the tournament a late add to his schedule and Wood had already RSVP’d to another obligation. Kuchar enlisted local caddie David Giral Ortiz, also known as El Tucan at the Mayakoba course. El Tucan caddies at the resort full-time and said he makes around $200 per day doing so. After the win, Kuchar called El Tucan a good luck charm and said, “He did just what I was hoping for and looking for.” It’s not unheard of for a player to take a local caddie if their regular caddie is unavailable or if they’e not settled enough with a regular caddie. An old policy for the major championships required players to take local caddies, not their usual traveling bagman. But the use of local caddies, even at lower-level PGA Tour events, is now rare. There are no set rates for caddies on the PGA Tour. Each player and caddie come to an arrangement, often handshake deals. Some players cover caddie expenses, some may not. Some pay out 8 percent of any prize money and 10 percent if the player wins the whole thing. Some go with a variation of the 5-7-10 framework — 5 percent of cash earned from a made cut, 7 percent for a top 10, and 10 percent of a win. But there is no set rule and it’s rarely discussed in public. At the time of the win, neither Kuchar nor El Tucan, who became a sensation during the week, disclosed what the local caddie banked from the victory. It would not be shocking for a local caddie to earn a smaller percentage than the regular, traveling caddie that does it every week with his pro. 10 percent of Kuchar’s winner’s prize money at the Mayakoba would be $129,600. El Tucan did not get that. He did not get close to that. A Timeline In January of this year, Tom Gillis, a journeyman fringe Tour pro, tweeted a rumor that some winning player from the fall series of events gave his caddie just $3,000 after the victory. With almost every winner’s check over $1 million now, $3,000 is an eye-catching low sum for a winning caddie. A day after Gillis’ tweet, Kuchar was singled out as the winner from the fall events that did this and the rumor took off on Twitter. With the rumor now out in the open and gaining steam, Kuchar was approached at the Sony Open and asked about the payment to El Tucan. He responded, “That’s not a story. It wasn’t 10 percent, it wasn’t $3,000. It’s not a story.” [Narrator’s voice: It was, at this point, most definitely a story.] This was a legendary non-denial denial of a rumor that was quickly perforating Kuchar’s image as some harmless “good guy” of the PGA Tour. There is a lot of room between $3,000, which would be 0.23 percent of the winner’s check, and 10 percent. Gillis again tweeted in mid January that he was now in direct contact with El Tucan and the payout was $5,000, so up to 0.38 percent of the winner’s check. A resort guest who spoke with Tucan tweeted the same. There was no official confirmation and the story quieted but the image damage was done to Kuchar, who was now forever associated with this epic stiffing. El Tucan Speaks On Tuesday, Golf Magazine senior writer Michael Bamberger published a story confirming the $5,000 amount. According to the local caddie, the two had a deal for $3,000 for the week plus a bonus unspecified percentage of the winnings. El Tucan wrote to Kuchar’s agent, Mark Steinberg, on Jan. 24: “I am not looking to disparage Matt or give him a bad name. Fair is fair, and I feel like I was taken advantage of by placing my trust in Matt.” El Tucan told Bamberger that he has since been offered an additional $15,000 but he turned it down as unacceptable, saying, “They can keep their money.” He was hoping for $50,000 and had reached out to Steinberg, also Tiger Woods’ agent, on three different occasions via email. El Tucan told Bamberger that Kuchar handed him an envelope on Sunday night of the win in November with bills from $100s down to $5s that added up to $5,000. Kuchar left the country and El Tucan, who lives in a “small cinderblock house” near the course, was initially under the impression a larger bonus payment would be coming. Kuchar Responds Confirmation of the story on Tuesday prompted a response from Kuchar on Wednesday at Riviera, site of this week’s Genesis Open on the PGA Tour. In his own interview with Bamberger, Kuchar said the deal before the week was $1,000 for a missed cut, $2,000 for a made cut, $3,000 for a top-20, and $4,000 for a top 10. The $1,000 was “extra” for a good week and brought the total to $5K. Bamberger described Kuchar as “slightly embarrassed” about the later offer for $15,000, saying that was all “the agency” and Steinberg trying to do damage control. Kuchar told Golf Channel’s Will Gray that the $5,000 was “more than we agreed upon” and that “people have got it in his head that he’s deserving something different than what we agreed upon.” He also expressed no regret for the sum he paid, saying he does not lose sleep over this and that you can’t “buy people’s ability to be OK with you.” He also added to that it was now more a social media issue than anything (seems like more than a social media problem!) and capped it off to Gray with, “Making $5,000 is a great week.” The Impact Kuchar looks like a bad person! He looks horrible! Those quotes are not making it better! He should feel bad! His one flimsy defense is that a “deal is a deal.” That does not change how objectively horrible he looks stiffing his caddie with 0.38 percent of the winner’s prize. No one expected him to go the usual 10 percent, but there is a reasonable number somewhere in the middle for a player with $48 million in on-course earnings. When you get the win, you simply have to chip off a bit more to the looper and in this case, that could have been a life-changing amount.<doc-sep>In November, Matt Kuchar won his first tournament in four years, taking home $1.3 million in prize money. He won the tournament with a substitute caddie, David Giral Ortiz, but paid him only $5,000 rather than the customary 10% afforded to caddies in a tournament win. Kuchar's reputation has taken a hit from the debacle, and a former PGA caddie, Michael Collins, said it's clear he's in the wrong because no other pros have defended him. Collins also said other players now feel Kuchar needs to up the offer to $50,000 to make things right. Matt Kuchar has turned one of the feel-good stories of the golfing year into a personal nightmare, all because he shorted a caddie's tip. In November, Kuchar won the Mayakoba Golf Classic — his first tournament win in four years — and the $1.3 million prize that came with it. Carrying Kuchar's bag in Mexico that weekend was David Giral Ortiz, a local caddie nicknamed "El Tucan," who stepped in after Kuchar's regular looper was unavailable to work on short notice. Since it's customary for golfers to tip their caddies roughly 10% of their earnings for a win, the weekend was thought to have been a $130,000 windfall for Ortiz. Read more: Matt Kuchar hired a local caddie nicknamed 'El Tucan' at the last minute and won his first tourney in 4 years Instead, Kuchar tipped Ortiz just $5,000 — $4,000 they had agreed to before the tournament and a $1,000 bonus for the win — earning scorn from the golfing world in the process. According to Golf.com, Ortiz told Kuchar in January that he thought his contribution to the win was worth $50,000, still far below the customary 10%. When Kuchar's camp countered with an offer of an additional $15,000, Ortiz said to keep the money. Kuchar later defended himself, baffling those following the story, by telling Golf.com on Wednesday, "For a guy who makes $200 a day, a $5,000 week is a really big week." Kuchar and his caddie, David Giral Ortiz, known as "El Tucan," during his win at the Mayakoba Golf Classic. PGA Tour Now that the golf world knows Ortiz's side of the story, many have turned on Kuchar, who ranks 10th on the all-time career earnings list , with more than $46 million. A former PGA caddie, Michael Collins, told ESPN's Keith Olbermann this week it was clear Kuchar is in the wrong because no other pros have weighed in to defend him. "Keith, here's the easiest answer I can give you," Collins said. "If Kuchar was in the right, how many PGA Tour pros are coming out defending what he did? I'll wait, and so will everyone else." Collins went on to say that while a proper tip at the time would have earned praise for Kuchar, the matter might now be beyond repair. "A couple of players told me if right after the tournament he writes the guy a check for $35,000 — which is still less than 5% of a commission — he would have been seen as a hero," Collins said. "Now most of the caddies and players that I talked to have said $50,000 is the number, and one player said even if he pays the guy $50,000, he's never going to live this down." Kuchar was seen by many as one of the most likable golfers on the tour, with a big smile and an impressive strike. There are few golfers on the planet easier to root for, which makes the entire scenario more baffling — perhaps no anecdote would fit better into the mythos of Kuchar than tipping a beloved local caddie named "El Tucan" a life-changing amount of money after helping him to his first win in years. Instead, Kuchar's reputation is still taking hits, and that's likely to continue until he makes an effort to right his wrong. Next time you hear cheers of "Kuuuuuuuuuuch" that usually accompany his swings, listen closer — they might actually be boos.<doc-sep>“This week I made comments that were out of touch and insensitive, making a bad situation worse,” Kuchar said in a written statement between his first and second rounds at the rain-plagued Genesis Open. “They made it seem like I was marginalizing David Ortiz and his financial situation, which was not my intention. I read them again and cringed. That is not who I am and what I want to represent. My entire tour carer I have tried to show respect and positivity. In this situation I have not lived up to those values or to the expectations I’ve set for myself. I let myself, my family, my partners and those close to me down, but I also let David down. I plan to call David tonight, something that is long overdue, to apologize for the situation he has been put in, and I have made sure he has received the full total that he has requested.”<doc-sep>
All of which makes Kuchar’s self-inflicted wounds and social media bumblings in recent days just mind-boggling. He misread the court and course of public opinion, badly, and in so doing, has bought himself maybe 20 years of being shamed for the paltry $5,000 he handed his caddie after his PGA Tour win of some $1.3 million last November in Mexico. But the best of ’em — Kuchar being one — typically are expert in escaping from a mess. A hacker sees the ball sitting in the impossible bunker and immediately pictures carding an 8. The pros figure it’s up in one, down in two. Or with just the right pace and backspin . . . it’s in the hole! Even with a touch more than $46 million in career earnings, Matt Kuchar has had a few bogeys. Hey, happens to the best of ’em. Finally, after being pilloried on social media all week, Kuchar on Friday afternoon attempted damage control, issuing a string of mea culpas and pledging to pay the aggrieved caddie $50,000. Will it be enough to recover his tattered public image? Right or wrong, not likely. Like short putts, words matter. Cash cures many ills, but it can’t erase words, especially in a digital media age that captures every vowel and nuance and stores them in perpetuity. “This week, I made comments that were out of touch and insensitive, making a bad situation worse,” Kuchar said in a statement released Friday afternoon, noting his words unintentionally seemed to marginalize the caddie. “I read them again and cringed. That is not who I am and not what I want to represent.” It wasn’t just that Kuchar, 40, stiffed his caddie with a pittance. Worse, as the story caught fire like a match to an Iowa hay barn, Kuchar doubled down on his hubris, standing by his right to stiff the guy and then blaming social media for making it a runaway story. Now, some three months after making Mayakoba his first Tour win in nearly five years with caddie David Giral Ortiz on his bag, it’s doubtful Kuchar could buy himself totally out of the jackpot if he coughed up the full $1.3 million and handed it all to Ortiz with keys to a new Bentley. It all made his $50,000 fix look too light, too late. “It’s just too bad that it’s turned into a story,” bemoaned Kuchar prior to his mea culpa, the story dogging him all this past week at Riviera, “because it doesn’t need to be.” True that. Kuchar could have avoided the entire kerfuffle, perhaps even bought himself a spot in the Good Guy Hall of Fame, had he done right by Ortiz from the start. First, he could have/should have paid him fair value that afternoon. Now, what’s fair value? That’s open to discussion, but any debate would end at no more than $130,000. Nothing is universal in the caddie world, but 10 percent is an accepted standard for carrying a Tour player to the winner’s circle. John Wood, Kuchar’s regular caddie, had a commitment and couldn’t be at Mayakoba. Kuchar picked up Ortiz, reported to live nearby in a modest cinder-block home, and among the regular caddies at Mayakoba who loop for roughly $200 a day. “For a guy who makes $200 a day,” said Kuchar earlier in the week, digging himself ever deeper in the sand trap of social media hell, “a $5,000 week is a really big week.” What next . . . let Mexico pay for it? The thin ice on which Kuchar stood was that he and Ortiz cut a deal prior to the tournament. Ortiz was to get $3,000 for the week, bumped to $4,000 if Kuchar broke his 55-month drought and pocketed the win. When he topped the field, he rounded it up to $5,000, handed Ortiz the cash, and went off to celebrate his win. The precise math here: It was $1.296 million for the win, less the $5,000 share, for what amounted to a 0.39 percent tip and a net of $1.291 million. Think of it in terms of a $50 bill at the Outback and a $0.20 tip for the server. Chances are, the hostess would drop you with a boomerang as you made for the exit, mate. In the weeks since, Ortiz reportedly e-mailed Kuchar’s agent, requesting the $50,000 Kuchar finally did pony up by sunset on Friday.