Peter Kuchar (1952- 2025) enjoyed wonderful life in golf
By Gary Van Sickle – 03/01/2025
Time passes far too quickly (except at the dentist’s office). We all know that.
It is a universal reminder and implicit warning that tomorrow is only a fervent hope, not a promise. Death always brings that cruel reality home.
Peter Kuchar passed away February 4. The father of PGA Tour player Matt Kuchar was on a vacation trip to St. Barts, an island paradise in the Caribbean, to celebrate the birthday of Meg, his wife of 51 years. They went for a swim, according to a Facebook post by Matt Kuchar’s sister, Rebecca, who wrote that her father had a heart attack and rescuers were unable to revive him. Peter was 73.
I did not know Peter well but he made me feel like I did. We had several interviews over the years as his son successfully advanced through the PGA Tour. It wasn’t just Peter’s charming eagerness to talk golf and especially Matt’s golf that made me feel like his confidante.
I did not know Peter well but he made me feel like I did. We had several interviews over the years as his son successfully advanced through the PGA Tour. It wasn’t just Peter’s charming eagerness to talk golf and especially Matt’s golf that made me feel like his confidante. Peter was rightfully proud of his son, a U.S. Amateur champion and a PGA Tour winner with multiple titles. Peter and Matt shared a special bond through the game they loved. When Peter learned that my son was also a professional golfer (who did not make it to the PGA Tour but coincidentally did play a practice round with Matt at the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont), we two golf dads knew something about each other that didn’t need to be spoken.
The shock of Peter’s passing hit the golf world hard. Matt immediately withdrew from the WM Phoenix Open. For Peter’s family, this is an inconceivable and inconsolable loss. His was a life well-lived, no question about it, but 73 is too young for a man with Peter’s spirit to depart. That is a senior’s viewpoint, of course. Age is a relative thing. Younger people realize this only slowly and meanwhile, precious time rushes past them like whitewater rapids.
The last time I interviewed Peter was 12 years ago when we did a lengthy phone interview recalling Matt’s career highlights. A dozen years ago? Already? That hardly seems possible but yes, of course, time travels in the express lane. I know I chatted with Peter at tournaments a few times more recently while he was spectating, maybe among the pines at the Masters, or in the shade at Harbour Town or TPC Sawgrass. Peter and Meg lived in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
In 2013, Peter helped me out of a jam. I was assigned to write a major feature for the Memorial Tournament Magazine, a thick souvenir program filled with in-depth articles. My story was to focus on the tournament’s defending champion — Matt Kuchar.
I traveled from Pittsburgh to Chicago to meet with Matt at the 2013 BMW Championship. It was just to trade emails or phone numbers to arrange an interview on the phone in the coming months. Matt was not interested, not even for Jack Nicklaus’ tournament program. Maybe I simply caught him at a bad time before a practice round.
That rejection turned into a stroke of good luck. I needed a different source for that story and Peter was always better at talking about Matt than Matt was. In fact, Peter recalled Matt’s 1997 U.S. Amateur Championship adventure in stirring detail and painted detailed pictures as only a proud father could.
Peter caddied in that U.S. Am for Matt, then a student at Georgia Tech University, and still recalled 17 years later how sprawling and beautiful the practice range was at Cog Hill, south of Chicago in rustic Lemont, Ill. He described how packed the spacious range was with players hitting balls when they first arrived and how the two of them kept walking until they found an open berth well down the line. He even recalled the scene’s ambient noise.
“You know the sound of a well-struck golf ball?” Peter asked. “It’s such a memorable and distinct sound. Well, we listened to the shots from all the other contestants on the range as we walked past. Matt and I looked at each other and said, Man, these guys are good!”
Neither Peter nor Matt had any idea that Matt was about to win the U.S. Amateur that week. What was just a dream for them began to become a possibility when Matt made it to the semifinal round against Randy Leen, an All-American from Indiana.
“We stayed in a little Holiday Inn nearby and I tossed and turned all night,” Peter remembered. “I knew if Matt beat Randy the next day, he was in the Masters.”
Back then, all four U.S. Am semifinalists received Masters invitations. (Only the two finalists do now.) Matt knew that, too, of course, but Peter said neither he nor his son mentioned the fabled invitation. He compared it to baseball players in the dugout not discussing their pitcher’s no-hitter while it is in progress.
When Matt drubbed Leen, 6 and 5, Peter remembers hugging his son on the 13th green. “We made it to Augusta!” one of them said although Peter could never recall which of them said it out loud first. Playing in the Masters for the first time is an unforgettable milestone achievement for any golfer.
Matt didn’t stop there. He knocked off Stanford’s Joel Kribel to win the title the next day, securing a place in U.S. Golf Association history, plus berths in the U.S. and British Opens.
“I know for a fact that if Matt had lost that final, we’d have gone home to Lake Mary, Fla.,” Peter said, “and everybody at our club would have patted Matt on the back and said, ‘Great job,’ and that would’ve been that. But he didn’t lose that match. He won it. And it changed his life forever.”
I can still hear the thrill and awe and pride in Peter’s voice when he spoke that last line. Matt’s success changed Peter’s life, too, but that wasn’t the important part of the equation for Dad. Peter downplayed his caddying role in the victory, too, saying “Matt holed everything that week,” making his job easy. For Peter, it was all about Matt’s success.
At some point, it becomes difficult to separate the fibers of Matt’s golf career and Peter’s life.
Peter was once a highly ranked tennis player at Stetson University in Florida who later became a successful life insurance salesman. Nobody writes romantic stories about insurance salesmen but the Masters in springtime? Golf lore springs eternal there and Matt became part of it.
The insurance salesman always made sure his son got his fill of golf at Heathrow Country Club, just north of Orlando, and he often joined Matt to play a few holes after he got off work. Their lives intertwined, just the way any father would want it. Matt played his way to stardom. He won nine times, including the Players Championship in 2012 and in 2018, he and Peter teamed up in the PNC Championship, the annual father-son invitational tournament, and finished ninth. As a dad, what’s better than playing golf with your son?
Peter was pleased to be along for the phenomenal ride that was Matt’s career and Matt was pleased to have Peter on board.
Matt alluded to that in a statement he issued to Golf Channel after Peter’s tragic passing: “He was the best father I could have ever hoped for. He introduced me to golf, a tie that will always remain between us. Those memories and so many more will be with me and our family forever.”
Matt is known for his competitive tenacity, notably on the Ping-Pong table in the U.S. Ryder Cup team room. He is also known for a smile that seems permanently plastered on his face, the result of fortunate genetics, actually, but Peter wanted me to mention in the Memorial Tournament story that Matt’s grin reminded him of basketball great Magic Johnson.
“Magic always had a smile on his face when he brought the ball down the court,” Peter told me, “as if to say, ‘I know something you don’t.’ To me, that’s Matt.”
Peter caddied a few times more for his son. He caught some flak at the 1998 U.S. Open from other caddies for being a little too excited or for celebrating a smidge too much when Matt hit a good shot. Maybe the pro caddies had a point but it seemed petty. Once Matt reached the PGA Tour as a pro, he picked up a regular tour caddie and Peter gladly became a faithful spectator.
Peter’s caddying highlight came at the 1998 Masters. Matt finished as low amateur in his first Masters that week and he was thus invited to Sunday night’s champions dinner, where Augusta National members celebrate that year’s winner, Mark O’Meara. Peter was invited, too.
“It was like the greatest fraternity of all time,” Peter said of the dining room. He laughed when he thought about the scene. “The only people there who weren’t wearing green jackets were Tim Finchem, commissioner of the PGA Tour, and the Kuchars.”
Each dinner guest received a commemorative menu and many members brought them over to get them signed by O’Meara and Matt.
“It was the most wonderful evening,” Peter said.
It was about to get even better. Matt was due back in class at Georgia Tech the next morning and still had to drive back to Atlanta that night. So once the late dinner concluded, Matt and Peter went upstairs in the clubhouse to pick up Matt’s gear in the Crow’s Nest, where Matt stayed during tournament week. They came down the stairway carrying Matt’s bags and instead of making a right turn, they veered left… into, they knew, the Holiest Grail of them all at Augusta National, the champions’ locker room. It is reserved for the golfing greats who earned their Green Jackets with their play in April.
Peter painted the scene for me. Even on the phone, he made it come to life.
“It’s midnight,” he said softly. “It’s quiet. We’re in the champions’ locker room.” He paused for effect. “We stopped there for just a second. Matt looked at me, I looked at him. We both got lumps in our throats. Then Matt said, ‘Maybe one day, I’ll be able to come here to change my shoes.’
“It was a magical moment.”
I have thought of that scene many times and tried to imagine it. I remember it every year when I return to the Masters. Peter got to share that moment with his son. Matt was able to give his father that moment.
It was one magical moment in Peter Kuchar’s wonderful life. He enjoyed so many precious days filled with golf, family, grandkids and love, and they flew past oh-so quickly.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/peter-kuchar-obituary?id=57534145
Gary Van Sickle has covered golf since 1980, following the tours to 125 men’s major championships, 14 Ryder Cups and one sweet roundtrip flight on the late Concorde. His work appeared, in order, in The Milwaukee Journal, Golf World magazine, Sports Illustrated and Golf.com. He is a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America. His email gvansick at aol dot com.
