Ouch, Kuch!!!

Watching the Riviera where someone yelled, "Go low" and another said, "Just not on the gratuity" ... this is why:

(Most sports writers are writing things like this one did)

by Brendan Porath (SB Nation)

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.

imeline

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.”

Remember golf

Feels like I haven’t played in months.

I was nearly asleep, but something was begging for examination.

Eagle Springs: first hole. (It made more sense than counting sheep.) Tee’d, and never ready; the first few practice swings feel like wielding an angry cat. There is nothing I trust in these wasted movements. It’s all hope, and I’m disguising my fear with it.

Going left: well, left is jail, pure and simple. If your ball isn’t in the water, it’s plugged so deep it’s speaking Chinese.

The middle: prayer answered, and an undisguised exhale of relief.

Going right: negotiation, maybe some strategy, and always a stoic oak whispering, “Go ahead, I dare you—no, I double dare you.” I examine the color of the flag as if from here it will, could possibly, affect my choice of clubs. Arguably the toughest initial hole I’ve played, this first hole.

Dogleg/uphill/wet (always wet): elevated camelback green.

Red flag: impossible if you’re past it.

White flag: inevitably placed on a sloping angle. Short, and the putt runs back at you like a kid on the first day of preschool.

Blue flag: the black sheep of flags. Unless your damp divot gives your wedge permission, you’re over into more crap; awkward chips are abundant and rarely garner satisfaction.

Leaving the first hole with a bogey is like putting a dollar in a change machine and getting only 75 cents back—and being just fine with that!

I remember golf—the abuse … and I miss it, so go figure!

Poker Wisdom?

Poker wisdom?


Conservatively, at any one time, there are a collective 420 years waiting to raise or fold. Over these past years, “yesterday” always seems to be the focus, a softer focus, a matter-of-factness. (New word.) The sense is  less of an apology for what was and more an explanation for it. Changes came in the way change might best be consumed—over time, a long time.


We have all, to a one, admitted scandalous actions and words—the hallways of our lives then were much narrower. We lived in our communities and learned from sidewalk to sidewalk, and of course we believed mostly what our parents believed (with the exception of sex, bedtime, and broccoli). We learned about races through avenues of television and some of us took a fresh look at one another, for the first time examining the other one’s last name. But hallways still remained narrow.


We shake our collective heads at the table and wonder how we could have been so distant from what, in retrospect, now seems so obvious. But it wasn’t … obvious. We rubbed two sticks together, if you will, to start a fire, unlike today’s flip of a switch. The news was uninterrupted by commercials; it was Joe Friday news. And it was meted out in small bites, because the hallways were narrow.


Politics was that “thing” that you felt you should know about and would take the time one day to investigate, but not now. Feeding kids and making rent were the paramount issues. No one on the television was selling right from wrong or left from right—at least not so obviously as to permeate those narrow halls enough to make us stop and think.


And that is where we “seniors” stand united in our observation: There seems to be reaction, not thought; the flavor might be accurate but there is no sipping. “Our side says …”—without any regard to Mr. Simon. Ideas need and deserve the fermentation that should come from thought, and while it may seem obvious to some, swift currents make the table suspicious. We are not guilty of ideas we digested as normal and true when we believed they would always be so. We were mistaken.


This new generation has grown up with explanations, retro accusations that are justified within that shield of hindsight and completely out of focus to a generation dueling with a guilt they’re supposed to feel, but don’t understand. How could it possibly have been different? We didn’t have the benefit of understanding and explanations that came in seconds from a keyboard. Most were, it appears at least to this group, political plebes.


When someone tells me, “This is the way it should be now,” and wants some immediate movement as if it has come from the burning bush, it is representation without fermentation.


Half the table voted for someone I didn’t. And long before that inauguration, they were tired, weary, and angry. And I realize no one wants to be told their nonfiction chronicle deserves to be edited—as if it would or could amend one’s today.


There is something frightening about righteousness: It’s not like a sunset that speaks for itself, or music that moves the soul. It lacks the subtle influence water has on thirst, and usually it is offered in fortissimo, showing that it couldn’t last if whispered.

Vegans and my drive to Palo Alto to see pictures

Vegan for a Day


X-ray explanation:

“Well, Mr. Raggio, you do have a measure of arthritis along your cervical spine, and plaque around your aortic arch, nothing too worrisome for a man of your years.” (There’s a smile, and then an extra nod of assurance as she begins to read or count the furrows on my brow and sees the squinting of my eyes.)

I turn and begin putting on my shirt. I stop, spin back toward her, and reply, “I don’t recall having any arthritic issues with my back, Doc. Plaque?  Like the one hanging in the den that says, ‘Awarded to Glenn Raggio for never calling in sick the whole year of 1983’? That’s a plaque, Doc! I thought teeth got plaque. I mean, I’m not a doctor, but I know the aorta, and teeth do not have a relationship, right? This sounds pretty heavy, Doc.”

She waves me down in the seat as if I were eight and says, “If you’re truly concerned about it, consider veganism.”

Now, “vegan” all by itself just sounds, well … evil. I can’t tell you why. But you add the “ism” and you start seeing Linda Blair bouncing on the bed!

She pulls out a chart, handling it like a treasure map, and spreads it over the examination table. It’s a chart of every vegetable known to mankind (and some that look like they used to walk). It starts out with pale, nearly white vegetables and graduates to tan, orange, brown, and then 40 shades of green shapes. The only thing I recognize is corn. All the while, I am hoping this isn’t going to be a test where she points to one and I have to fucking guess what it is.

Then it dawns on me (well, two dawns, really)—she’s a vegan! The other “dawn” is that as a cop, I should have figured this out much earlier. Must be my aortic plaque setting in. You ever see people who go into health-food stores or those supplement places, and they have that sort of sheen on their face? It’s like a tan, or a faux tan, produced on the skin by some vegetable you have to cook with certain spices so you can’t taste what it really tastes like.

Anyway.

She gently guides her hand affectionately over the images, pointing out her favorites and making recommendations as she goes. “This one is good for the prostate, and this one is great for the skin. And oh, this one works against plaque and Republicans …”

Okay, I made that last part up.

“You’d make a perfect vegan, Mr. Raggio.”

I’m not sure how to take the “compliment,” so I ask, “Why do you say that, Doc?”

“Well, you appear to be in reasonably good shape, you’re not completely gray, you did well on the eye chart …”

She went on for a bit, and I let her, but I couldn’t help but add right after she finished, “And I’d look smart in Birkenstocks?”

The chart was suddenly rolled up, and she was staring at me over her glasses. “Vegetables will do for you what clearly you’ve been unwilling to do for yourself.”  Now I’m thinking, I wonder which one of those vegetables will buy me a Taylor driver, but I hold my tongue.

Raley’s produce section later that day:

I peruse the aisles as if I belong there. Pick up some of those images I saw earlier and imagine them on my plate. A woman sees me and starts in on how if you prepare them this way and add some of that and this, you’ll be in heaven. I nod and smile, knowing full well these Nikes are going to melt in hell for sure. I see a small sign for arugula and I start to giggle. It sounds like one of those exotic diseases that eats flesh. The same woman smiles from 50 feet away and again starts my way. All I can think of is, where the hell is Dick?! I practice a quick duck-and-cover maneuver and escape into the land of processed food.

Fuck it, life is dreaming of a grilled cheese and waking to make it!

MONDAY, MONDAY

I’m driving home from yesterday’s debacle and I’m suddenly reminded of that Mamas & Papas song,  “Monday, Monday.”

Monday, Monday, can´t trust that day,

Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way,

Oh Monday mornin´ you gave me no warnin´ of what was to be …

There were exceptions during the round that almost made the gas money worthwhile. I saw Alan hit balls that literally appeared to disappear! And others that went so errant I imagined the Fresno Bee with breaking news:

 A utility worker was found deceased today from unknown causes, though detectives suspect his passing might have had something to do with a Titleist #4 embedded in his forehead. They urge any golfer wanting to retrieve his lost ball to contact … blah blah blah at blah blah blah.

And then there was Dick, who said he had this great idea: He was showing pictures of fairways to his new sleeve of Callaway balls. “Look, it makes sense! I’m sorta making ‘em, well, homing-pigeon-type balls—they’ll know where to land!” We all squinted and leaned towards him to see if he was serious. He was.

Alan and he are best friends, so Alan readily agreed, turned toward us, and raised his eyebrows to his hairline. The Hat grinned weakly and said, “Wow … how’d you think of that one?” 

Having missed several fairways myself, I admit I gave some consideration to the concept around the 13^th hole. 

I called “The Gal” and Lyle pointed out that no self-respecting coyote would come within 500 yards of this foursome. 

Monday golf that became Thursday’s hope—again!

Dennis has left us ...

"Denny, club down one or two!"

No, he knew what his yardage was and fought to get back to it ...not the other way around.

He loathed compromise.

Mystery bird appears again!

Sam spotted it first. There it is sitting on the closest rock. Yes, there is a duck and an egret who insisted on staying in the picture!