[PHOTO: David Jensen]
One of the first explanations Matt Kuchar gave for his bizarre one-man Monday finish at the Wyndham Championship two weeks back was that he was “trying to set an example” for playing partner Max Greyserman. Kuchar’s idea being that Greyserman still had some important shots to hit, and that they were far past the point of when they should have stopped playing due to darkness. “I feel bad, the poor kid should have won this tournament,” Kuchar said. “By me not playing, it may show Max he has an important shot to hit.”
While Kuchar’s decision did draw plenty of criticism, the logic was still fair. That said, Kuchar’s message to Greyserman may have fallen on deaf ears.
Greyserman, who hadn’t yet spoken on the Kuchar saga, gave his point of view in a podcast interview at this week’s BMW Championship with Barstool Sports’ Dan Rapaport. Rapaport asked Greyserman if he was aware of what Kuchar later said he was doing, and the PGA Tour rookie gave an interesting answer.
“No, not at all,” Greyserman said. “He didn’t say anything to me, to be honest. I’m not really sure why he said that in his post-round press conference.”
Greyserman did agree that it was already very dark when they arrived at 18 tee, explaining that his group couldn’t even see down the hill on the finishing par 4 at Sedgefield Country Club. That’s when Kuchar rushed his tee shot, not knowing that eventual winner Aaron Rai has still yet to play his second shot from the fairway. It created an odd scene, with cameras panning to Kuchar’s pulled tee shot with Rai still in frame.
“What you do when it’s getting dark is, you want to tee off, you want to finish,” Greyserman said. “It looked like he was just trying to get the tee in the ground and hit quickly, because it seems like he wanted to finish.
“We couldn’t see and there was no one telling us that there was people in the fairway. That wasn’t on purpose, we had no idea.”
Greyserman said that as his group made their way to their drives, an official told them that they’d normally blow the horn at that moment, but they weren’t going to because the two final groups were on the last hole. If they wanted, though, they could stop, which Kuchar did. Once Rai made birdie, taking a two-shot lead, Greyserman decided he didn’t need to come back in the morning.
“I tried to hole the shot, and if not, I can’t see anything, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Greyserman added. “So, I’m like, Let’s just finish. I hit my shot and I look over at Kuchar and he’s in the trees and he just marked his ball and never said really anything. We just keep going and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to come back in the morning.’
“I don’t really know why, again, he never said anything to me. Not sure why he said that in the media. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think he needed TIO relief. Maybe that was going to take a lot of time, which is fine. For him to come out and say that he was trying to do something in service to me, I thought that was pretty strange.”
Greyserman, who tied for second at the Wyndham, was able to sneak through last week’s first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs with a T-33 finish. He currently sits at 49th in the FedEx Cup standings, needing to jump nearly 20 spots to make it to the Tour Championship at East Lake as a rookie.
