News
What pressure? Amateur Champ Keeps Smiling
August 25, 1997
By Mike Berardino, Augusta Chronicle
LEMONT, Ill. -- Matt Kuchar never stopped smiling. For seven straight days at this U.S. Amateur, the kid with the rosy cheeks and the silky golf swing kept flashing his pearly whites and subduing his opponents.
Don't think for a minute those two actions were unrelated.
Oh, Kuchar's smile is pleasant enough. And as best we can tell, there's nothing fake about it.
But the 19-year-old Georgia Tech sophomore most assuredly irked more than a few of his six opponents at Cog Hill Golf and Country Club.
He birdied and smiled. He bogeyed and smiled. He won holes and smiled. He lost holes and smiled.
He smiled. He smiled. He smiled.
This wasn't your garden-variety grin either. It was one of those mammoth, unrelenting, look-everybody-these-are-my-gums deals. It was a smile suitable for the beauty queen on the Thanksgiving float. It was almost an eerie smile, making Kuchar seem like some sort of animated Disney character.
Trust us on this one. The last guy from Georgia who smiled this much went from his peanut farm all the way to the White House.
Hi, I'm Matt Kuchar, and I want to be your U.S. Amateur champion.
Sunday, in winning a 36-hole final with Stanford's Joel Kribel, Kuchar used his Perma-grin to keep his nerves, his swing and his favored foe in check. He built a three-hole lead in the morning and poured himself an un-cola (7-up) with 10 to play.
Then the wheels started to come off. In a five-hole span Kuchar's lead shrunk to 3-up. Walking off No. 15, it was down to 2-up. Disaster lurked.
His caddie/father, Peter Kuchar, admitted later the pressure was starting to bother him.
"I was thinking of the Red Sox gagging all those years," said the elder Kuchar, a lifelong fan of the luckless Bostons. "I kept thinking, `Don't do this to me."
The old man shouldn't have fretted. All he needed to do was look at his grinning son to realize everything would be all right.
Pars at 16 and 17 closed it out, 2 and 1. The grin got even bigger.
Kribel denied that Kuchar's smile helped forestall his comeback.
"I didn't really pay much attention to his facial expression," the Stanford junior said. "I had enough to worry about on my own."
Ah, but match play is all about putting the screws to your opponent and watching for signs of acquiescence. When you shave five holes off his lead and still can't wipe the stupid grin off his face, how annoying is that?
Golf history is full of champions with steely glares (Nick Faldo) and harrowing stares (Raymond Floyd) and squinty-eyed competitive zeal (Nicklaus). Now it has Kuchar, whose greatest weapon is a grin.
"I was determined to smile the whole time this week," he said. "No matter what happened, no matter what was going on, I was having the time of my life."
And now the kid from Lake Mary, Fla., joins some incredible company. His name gets engraved on that golden Havemeyer Trophy along with some heavy-duty dudes.
Names like Robert Tyre Jones Jr., Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard, Phil Mickelson, Hal Sutton, Mark O'Meara, Jerry Pate, Craig Stadler, Lanny Wadkins and Deane Beman.
It was Jones, of course, who made this event with five victories from 1924-30. But since that run of brilliance, the Peach State has been pretty quiet at these clambakes.
The last Amateur winner with Georgia ties was Buddy Alexander, the former Georgia Southern golf coach who won in 1986. Before that you have to go all the way back to Brunswick's Steve Melnyk in 1969.
Georgia Tech has produced two of the last five national college players of the year. But David Duval never won here. Nor did Stewart Cink. Or, going back a ways, Larry Mize.
It took a kid with coolant in his veins and heavy voltage in his face to put Tech on the board. And that's something to smile about.
