Pro golfer Matt Kuchar announced today that he’s seen the light on the decision to stiff his fill-in caddie at a tournament in Mexico in November, no doubt due to the hearty all-shit diet he’s consumed in the months since. Kuchar offered an apology and says he has now settled up with caddie David Ortiz:
Kuchar competed in the Mayakoba Golf Classic in the fall “on a whim,” and therefore required the services of a local caddie when his regular guy was unavailable. Caddies are customarily paid a 10-percent cut of a golfer’s winnings in a tournament, which in Ortiz’s case would’ve meant a life-changing $130,000 slice of Kuchar’s $1.3 million winner’s purse. Ortiz was instead paid a measly $5,000. Ortiz, upon learning later that his cut was a tiny fraction of what Kuchar would normally pay a caddie after a win of this size, wrote Kuchar a letter requesting $50,000. Kuchar declined, and waved away the controversy by pointing out that Ortiz doesn’t make much of a living, so really he should be happy with five grand:
“For a guy who makes $200 a day, a $5,000 week is a really big week,” he said.
“I try to look at the bright side of everything,” Kuchar said. “I hope he’s happy, I hope things are really good in his life. I have to think, if he was given the same opportunity to do it again, he’d say, `Yeah.’ He has a nice personality. He’s easy to be with. The photo of the two of us with the trophy, that will always be on the wall in my office.”
Kuchar took a beating over both the payment and this slimy explanation, from current and former golfers as well as golf fans and commentators. All it took was everyone getting mad at him to have a change of heart.