Kuchar & El Tucan Debacle – My Thoughts

If you’ve missed the news in golf of the caddie payment controversy between Matt Kuchar and David (El Tucan) Ortiz, I’m not sure where you’ve been!

Ortiz is a local caddie at the host course for the Mayakoba tournament that Kuchar won late last year.  He was filling in for Kuchar’s regular caddie who couldn’t make the trip.  According to Kuchar, the agreement was $1,000 if he missed the cut, $2,000 if he made the cut, $3,000 for a top-20, and $4,000 for a top-10.  There hasn’t been a mention of what he would pay for a win.  In the end, Kuchar paid Ortiz $5,000 for the win.

Just recently this blew up into a story from social media.  I’m not going to get into the details of the back and forth.  It all came to a head last week when Kuchar made a statements in an interview with Michael Bamberger.  You can read it here and it provides some more of the details.

Typically, a winning caddie who is a full-timer will get 10% of a winner’s check in addition to nominal weekly base pay.  These are handshake deals but that is widely viewed as the normal arrangement.  I don’t think anyone expects Kuchar to pay 10% to Ortiz.  The issue is more so that he paid him 0.38% of the winnings.  After outcry from the Bamberger interview and some verbal abuse at Riviera, Kuchar issued a statement apologizing to Ortiz.  Further, he committed to paying Ortiz an additional $45,000.

I’m not going to pass judgement on Kuchar.  The court of public opinion is a fickle place and no one can make everyone happy.  I’ve seen many recounts of Kuchar being “not the best” but I also know there are other accounts to the contrary.  I don’t put much stock in any one off encounter with famous people.

I think the $5,000 was an insufficient amount to pay.  In my opinion, $50,000 seems much more reasonable based on the winner’s check.  Kuchar’s career earnings don’t factor into that opinion at all.  None of that matters and I don’t agree with the arguments suggesting that it should.  I would believe the same thing if a rookie did this.

Consequently, Kuchar and his agent Mark Steinberg didn’t handle the backlash particularly well with some of his comments but at least he’s made good on the remaining $45,000.  Hopefully he has learned something from this and comes out of it a better person.

You can probably tell I’m a bit torn on this issue.  I can see both sides.  Social media and responding to it can be a prickly place.  It’s nearly impossible to come out looking good.  My main hope for this is that Ortiz and Kuchar gain something from this incident, whatever that may be.