Kuchar admits being hurt by controversies

Matt Kuchar has admitted hearing his grandmother express shock about some of the things being said about him had been “very tough” during the spate of controversial incidents that made him golf ’s most unpopular figure.

The American was widely criticised after he only paid a temporary caddie $5,000 following a win on the PGA Tour in Mexico last September that earned him $1.3 million and only rectified that matter after admitting he’d later made comments that “were out of touch and insensitive, making a bad situation worse”.

Then, earlier this year in the Dell Technologies Match Play in Austin, Kuchar found himself in the spotlight again over a short putt that his opponent, Sergio Garcia, thought had been conceded before more controversy followed as he asked for relief from a pitch mark during the Memorial Tournament.

“The caddie thing was a tricky situation,” said Kuchar, pictured, ahead of his appearanceintheaberdeenstandard Investments Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club. “I feel like the difficult situations you get, you learn from those situations. You don’t learn from victories very often. You learn from your setbacks, and I think that’s something where I’ve certainly learned from.

“I look at that as an opportunity for me to learn to be more generous across the board. Sometimes the setbacks are hard, but those are the lessons that you tend to learn from and come out better from.”

Had he been hurt by some of the criticism aimed at him over the past few months? “Sure, it was difficult,” he added. “I don’t do social media, so I think that helped to not see much. However, hearing from my grandmother, you know, the things that she was hearing and talking to me about was really tough.

“You really want to make your parents proud, your grandparents proud. I’ve kind of always been that kid that had made my parents and grandparents proud. To see them hear some of the things said about me, was never something that I wanted, to put them in that position, and that was very, very difficult.

“She didn’t tell any examples, just the fact that she had called me to say, “I can’t believe what they are saying” is hard, because I’ve got a pretty decent idea from other friends telling me, ‘I can’t believe what this guy said, or this guy really threw you under the bus’.”