GOLF NOTES

Cup,” Woods said. “And we’re basically coming full circle at Royal Melbourne. He and I teamed up in one our matches in ‘98, I was a captain’s pick in ‘11 and now we get to return as two leaders of this team. We’re going to have some fun, but we’re there to win.” The Mexican caddie for Matt Kuchar when he won the Mayakoba Classic told golf.com he was paid $5,000 the night after the victory, and that Kuchar later offered an additional $15,000 that the caddie turned down because he found it unacceptable.

“No thank you. They can keep their money,” David Girl Ortiz told the website.

Kuchar used Ortiz for Mayakoba when his regular caddie couldn’t make it. Kuchar earned $1,296,000 for the victory.

Michael Bamberger at golf.com spoke to Ortiz through a translator. The caddie says the original agreement was $3,000, plus an unspecific percentage of whatever Kuchar won. Ortiz says he didn’t expect to be paid like a regular PGA Tour caddie — a typical payout is 10 percent for a victory — but that he thought it was worth $50,000.

The story was panned in social media last month when PGA Tour Champions player Tom Gillis tweeted about it, saying Kuchar paid only $3,000. Asked about it at the Sony Open, Kuchar said: “It wasn’t 10 percent. It wasn’t $ 3,000. It’s not a story.”

According to the website, Ortiz wrote in a Jan. 24 email to Kuchar’s agent, Mark Steinberg: “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.”

Ortiz says he wrote three emails and received one reply from Steinberg that said in part, “What Matt has offered is fair.”