Kuchar Overcomes Na, Wins The Players

Steve DiMeglio on Matt Kuchar's breakthrough professional win at The Players.

Matt Kuchar endured his fidgety playing partner Sunday and got the better of the treacherous Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass to win the biggest title of his professional career. It helps to be as steady as the day is long.

Garry Smits in the Florida Times-Union:

Don't ever let the smile fool you.

Matt Kuchar can project that Huck Finn persona all he wants but his peers on the PGA Tour know better.

Now the world does, too.

Bob Harig on what the win means to the Kuchar family.

Can it really be 15 years since Kuchar won the U.S. Amateur at Cog Hill? Or 14 years since he played the first two rounds of the Masters with defending champion Tiger Woods, finishing tied for 21st as an amateur? Or doing even better at the U.S. Open, where he tied for 14th?

Peter Kuchar was on the bag as Matt's caddie during those tournaments, and reminded a questioner that they were in the second-to-last group on Saturday at the Olympic Club, where the U.S. Open will again be played this year.

It's been a long journey to this point, with Kuchar winning at tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, where his parents, including mother Meg, make their home.

"You dream about stuff like this," Peter Kuchar said. "But to do it right here in our hometown and our backyard. … the best thing about it is, every time I drive in here for the rest of my life, I'm going to see his picture [on flag poles that border the entrance to the course]. To me, that gives me chills."

Steve Elling reviews the many chances Kuchar had to blow this one at the perilous TPC Sawgrass. And Kuchar was understandably feisty after the round.

A matter of minutes after Kuchar hoisted the crystal trophy for winning the Players Championship on Sunday, he was asked about how comparatively few times he had delivered a title, despite contending seemingly every time he tees it up.

This admittedly delicate inquiry, well-phrased by a veteran media member, was met with a hilarious blast from the usually mild-mannered man of the moment.

"Yeah, suck it, big guy," Kuchar roared back, drawing the biggest laugh of the week.

David Whitley on the simple swing change that saved Kuchar's career.

“It clicked on the fifth ball,” Kuchar said.

He went to a coach named Chris O’Connell. Kuchar swears that five shots were all it took to resurrect his career.

It has something to do with clubface rotation through impact and the swing plane. I’d get more technical, but Kuchar lost me at hello when he started explaining it Sunday.

Whatever the trick, it helped him so much he wrote the foreword to Solid Contact, a book by O’Connell’s mentor, Jim Hardy.

“Your hear professionals routinely say they’re working on a swing change and it might take months—even a year—before they start seeing positive results from that change,” Kuchar wrote. “That wasn’t the case for me.”

PGATour.com signature columnist Larry Dorman says Matt Kuchar's win was a signature win. And on Pete Dye's signature course. In the PGA Tour's signs..oh I'll give it a rest.

The last holes were not enough to derail Kuchar's march to the title. They were in his mind, but not in a way that would rattle him. With a birdie at 16, a bogey at 17 and a par at 18, he had done exactly what he needed to do, and that he did it with a smile on his face made it all the more special.

"It's completely a natural reaction," he said. "I love playing the game of golf. I have fun doing it. I am a golf junkie. I have to force myself to take vacations where the clubs don't make it. The game is just always so challenging, and I think it's the challenge that's addictive to me. To have something to try to get better at. There's no end to all the different avenues in golf where you can try to get better."

The post round meeting with the press:

And the final round highlights: