Matt Kuchar Offered Up an Apology for Being Cheap and Tone Deaf
By Michael Shamburger
Matt Kuchar has been in hot water with both fans and the media lately after making some pretty insensitive comments regarding the whole David “El Tucan” Ortiz payment situation that took place in November of 2018 at the Mayakoba Classic.
After the first round of the Genesis Open, where Kuchar was taunted by fans as he played for being so cheap, he released the following statement.
This sounds like a genuine apology and one that will hopefully please the masses.
As I wrote before, Kuchar’s decision to only offer up a bonus of $2,000 after agreeing to payment of $3,000 plus bonuses for a week of work, doesn’t make him a monster, but it does make him cheap.
Where Kuchar ran into problems was with his statement to Golf Channel’s Will Gray:
"“It’s kind of too bad that it’s turned into a story. I really didn’t think it was a story because we had an arrangement when I started,” Kuchar said. “I’ve done enough tournaments and had enough weekly caddies, and I’m very clear about what the payment will be. And we had an arrangement Tuesday that David was OK with, and I thought Sunday he was very much OK with it.”"
He continued:
"“It’s done. Listen, I feel like I was fair and good,” he said. “You can’t make everybody happy. You’re not going to buy people’s ability to be OK with you, and this seems to be a social media issue more than anything. I think it shouldn’t be, knowing that there was a complete, agreed-upon deal that not only did I meet but exceeded. “So I certainly don’t lose sleep over this. This is something that I’m quite happy with, and I was really happy for him to have a great week and make a good sum of money. Making $5,000 is a great week.”"
This basically makes Kuchar look extremely tone deaf and shows he has no self-awareness when it comes to the amount of money he’s made on the PGA Tour.
It doesn’t make him a horrible human being, just one who hasn’t experienced what it’s like to live without millions of dollars in the bank in a long time.