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Golfweek’s Father of the Year is Matt Kuchar, who found ‘magic’ in emotional golf victory

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Golfweek’s Father of the Year is Matt Kuchar, who found ‘magic’ in emotional golf victory

Matt Kuchar remembers playing Ping-Pong nearly every night out on the back porch against his dad, Peter, as a kid. They were wars that hardened him into the competitor he grew into, a winner of nine PGA Tour events. During his career, Kuchar has hit millions of golf shots but none quite like the approach shot he stiffed at the final hole of the 2025 PNC Championship in Orlando in December.

Playing in the two-man team event with his 18-year-old son Cameron, Kuchar credited his dad, who had passed away suddenly from a heart attack earlier in the year, with being with him all day. There was neither white-knuckle drama nor tension because Team Kuchar would tap in for eagle to shatter the tournament scoring record by five strokes, but there was plenty of emotion.

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“I don’t know if you believe in karma, if you believe in fate, whatever you believe in, there’s something magical that does exist. I’m a believer in God, that Dad is up above looking down, and what happened on 18, I could hardly stand up and hit a shot. For me to hit it to a foot makes me think there’s something more out there,” said Kuchar before tearing up.

“Just miss … miss Pops.”

Cameron and Matt Kuchar pose with their winning belts at the PNC Championship.

It was a moment that touched the hearts of all who watched it, and it’s one of the reasons that Golfweek is proud to honor Matt – and by extension Peter – as its 2026 Father of the Year (Golfweek has awarded this distinction since 1983 annually with a few exceptions because of COVID-19). Kuchar was honored on Saturday, a day before Father’s Day and coincidentally his 48th birthday, at a ceremony during the Golfweek Father-Son Championship at Reunion Resort in Kissimmee, Florida.

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Kuchar’s mother motivated him to start playing

Matt is quick to point out that golf became the family sport because of his mom, Meg, who met Peter at Stetson University, a private school in DeLand, which is only about an hour’s drive east down Interstate 4 from Reunion. Peter was a senior and Meg a freshman. As the story goes, she was watching a friend compete in a tennis match when Peter, playing on a nearby court, spied her in the crowd and threw his match so he could introduce himself before she had a chance to leave.

“If you know Peter and the competitor that he is,” Meg said, “you know that’s not true, but he liked to say that and he did ask me to go to the beach with him the next day.”

They were married for 51 years. Peter remained a devoted tennis player, becoming at one time ranked first in doubles in the state of Florida. He only had time to play golf twice a year in work-related charity outings. That is until Christmas in 1991, when Meg upgraded their tennis membership to include golf at Heathrow Country Club, near the family home in Orlando. She thought Peter was going to love this gift because it would be good for his insurance business – both to meet more people and because, frankly, more business happened on the golf course than on the tennis courts. But she could tell from the expression on his face that she had chosen poorly.

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Photos: Golfweek’s Father of the Year Matt Kuchar through the years

MCKINNEY, TEXAS – MAY 21: Matt Kuchar of the United States reacts to a shot on the sixth hole during the first round of THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson 2026 at TPC Craig Ranch on May 21, 2026 in McKinney, Texas. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

(Stacy Revere, Getty Images)

“It was priceless,” she recalled. “You could see cha-ching, cha-ching as he was figuring out what the gift I gave him was going to cost him, but he decided to keep it, and Matt followed him over to the golf side.”

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Matt was skeptical about the present at first too. He thought golf was for old people. But Peter would let Matt drive the golf cart and he liked that. From the start, Matt was blessed with natural ability, and golfers would stop and watch him swing. Every day after high school, he’d get dropped off at the driving range and hit balls. When Peter was done with work, he’d join in and they’d go out and play nine holes. Over the years, various friends and parents asked Peter and Meg their secret for hooking Matt on golf with hopes of following in his footsteps.

“We never made him practice,” she said, “We made him come home.”

Dad Peter got the bug, too, and worked his bag

In retrospect, Meg concluded that it was the gift that kept on giving for the rest of their lives. Peter got the golf bug too, essentially walking away from tennis and becoming good enough at golf to shoot his age multiple times. In 1997, Matt won the U.S. Amateur with Peter as caddie, and was paired with Tiger Woods, the defending champion at the 1998 Masters. At least once a day, someone still stops Matt to tell him they remember watching him play his first Masters, where he finished low amateur, with his dad on the bag. Meg has never forgotten the impact they made those weeks.

Matt Kuchar and his father Peter discuss a putt on the 10th green during third round of the 1998 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.

Matt Kuchar and his father Peter discuss a putt on the 10th green during third round of the 1998 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.

“I had so many men come up to me with tears in their eyes on the grounds at Augusta because they were so touched by the father-son bond that Matt and Peter showed in the embrace when he won the U.S. Amateur that touched men’s hearts in such a big way,” Meg recalled.

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See the list of past winners of Golfweek’s Father of the Year

Matt met his wife, Sybi, a tennis player at Georgia Tech and a year ahead of Matt, waiting in line with various athletes for drug testing. They didn’t date in college, but after teaching tennis in San Francisco for a few years upon graduation, she returned to Georgia and they reconnected. Their first date was at the Shark Shootout in Naples, Fla. They were engaged six months later and married a year after their first date. Both of their two sons have followed in the footsteps of one of their parents’ primary sports – Cameron is headed to Texas Christian University in the fall on a golf scholarship and Carson, 16, is the top-ranked doubles tennis player for his age.

Matt and Sybi prioritized family, traveling together on the road and homeschooling the boys to keep the family unit together longer than anyone else following the PGA Tour.

“Somebody told us early on, don’t let school interfere with your child’s education. We took that to heart and thought, there’s so much to learn about life being on the road,” Matt said.

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Just as Matt’s mom used to take him to Fenway Park and for lobster rolls during a tournament in Boston, the Kuchars have always made cultural experiences and exploration a priority, tacking on an extra week during overseas trips and taking their boys surfing in Nicaragua, cutting trails and farming in New Zealand and celebrating Cameron’s fifth birthday in Turkey with a traditional Turkish bath.

Kuchar made golf fun for his kids

As for his secret to getting his kids interested in sports? Matt did everything he could to make the experience fun. He’d bring baseball gloves and a ball to the range and play catch. Then they’d have BB gun target practice and somewhere in between they’d hit a few balls. On the tennis court, he’d let the boys take aim at him with spongy, low-compression balls.

Matt and Sybi resisted the temptation to start their boys in one sport when they were young. They feared that too much pressure might make playing a game feel like a job. Both boys were encouraged to play every sport under the sun until they discovered their passion. As he spoke about his parenting style, Matt dropped this gem: “I think the best lessons are the ones that are caught and not taught,” he said.

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Matt described his relationship with Cameron as more than father-son; he’s become a best friend and a training partner in recent years. Matt said he’s always been guided by a philosophy ingrained into him by his father:

“I’m there to raise a boy to become a man,” Matt said.

Matt sounds the part of the proud papa when he says Cameron is far more talented than he ever was at his age, and describes Cameron as better than most of his contemporaries on Tour when he gets a wedge in his hands. One day, not long ago, he found out just how good Cameron can be when son beat father for the first time. An eagle at 10 and Cameron grabbed a commanding lead. “I said, ‘Holy cow, and this is the part of my trying to get in his head using the fatherly advantage. I said, ‘You’re 4 up on me, aren’t you?’ He definitely knew exactly how he stood,” Matt remembered.

With the deficit whittled to one on the final hole, Cameron had about 10 feet for par.

Matt Kuchar and son Cameron celebrate PNC victory with family.

Matt Kuchar and son Cameron celebrate PNC victory with family.

“He made it and instantly broke into this huge smile on his face,” Matt recounted. “It was a weird feeling because you hope to hold them off as long as possible but at the same time, I was awfully proud and I knew that day was coming.”

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The family’s move from St. Simons Island, Georgia, to Tequesta, Florida, was motivated not by golf for Matt and Cameron but rather for a higher level of tennis education and competition for Carson, who has developed his game at Ibis Club under Jay Berger, a former U.S. Davis Cup team member and the father of PGA Tour winner Daniel Berger.

“It was time for a bigger pond for the boys,” Matt said.

Kuchar gets to spend time with boys on golf course

He is self-aware enough to know he’s been the big winner of the father-son golf dynamic that has allowed Cameron to be his caddie at the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship in March and recently at U.S. Open final qualifying.

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“I tell people I feel awfully lucky that my boys both like playing golf,” he said. “The amount of time I get to spend with them because they like playing golf is priceless.”

Among Matt’s most treasured rounds were those played with four generations of Kuchars – including his grandfather, Maurice, “Big Kuch,” whose father, also named Peter, was a window washer who immigrated from Ukraine during the Bolshevik Revolution. Matt’s biggest win as a pro came at the 2012 Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., not far from where Meg and Peter had lived since 2001 and where Meg remains, and it made him eligible for the PNC Championship.

Meg said Peter looked forward to that tournament “like nobody’s business” while Sybi called it the favorite week of the year for the boys. In 2018, Matt and Peter teamed up to compete in it for the first time, which resulted in this humorous story that Peter told of receiving an email from Matt that said simply, “Get Ready!”

“I ran into Jim Furyk at TPC (Sawgrass) and he said, ‘I hear you are playing in the ‘PNC.’ I said ‘I’m not sure that that’s true,’” Peter recalled that year.

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He initially missed the attachment on that email that listed the tournament’s participants. In that first year, the boys still were too young to play and Peter treasured the memories of sinking some long-range birdie putts. He loved seeing his nameplate on a placard on the range. “He ate that up with a spoon,” Meg said.

Loss of father was a huge blow to Kuchar family

In the ensuing years, Peter lived to be a caddie for his grandsons, who alternate playing with Matt. Peter waited for the invitation to arrive with the joy of a child on Christmas morning.

Peter and Meg were on a cruise in the Virgin Islands and off the coast of St. Barths celebrating Meg’s 70th birthday when he went for a swim and had a heart attack on Feb. 4, 2025.

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“He was in love with me and happy and whole and healthy and then he was gone in a blink,” Meg said.

Matt was practicing ahead of the WM Phoenix Open when he received a text from his mom that something was wrong. Just two days earlier, Matt spoke with his dad on the phone via FaceTime for the final time.

There’s always a tomorrow, until there’s not.

“He misses his dad,” Meg said. “We all miss his dad terribly, but God’s been very good in giving us signs from the very beginning that he’s got Peter and he’s got us too.”

For instance, there was the time when she had to leave St. Barth’s for the next port and a double rainbow appeared in the sky.

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“That felt like God telling me that he had Peter and I was OK to go,” she recalled.

Matt Kuchar hands a club to his caddie and father, Peter, on the fourth hole during the final round of the 2023 PNC Championship at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club.

Matt Kuchar hands a club to his caddie and father, Peter, on the fourth hole during the final round of the 2023 PNC Championship at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club.

At the 2025 PNC Championship, the whole family gathered, including Matt’s sister, Rebecca, for Peter’s favorite week. Meg could feel his presence everywhere. She found it hard to walk into the host hotel and run into people who were unaware of Peter’s passing. But on that final day, she felt her husband’s presence all day long. So, too, did Matt. “It was beyond what would have felt normal just to play so well,” he said. “I felt like there must have been something extra helping us along.”

After all the family pictures on the green with their matching champion’s red-leather belts, Matt wasn’t ready to end the celebration. Winning happens too infrequently, and so Matt kept the party going.

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“All of us except my grandson, who was working, ended up checking back into the Ritz and spending an extra night to revel in the joy of the moment,” Meg said.

Father and son wore their belts out to dinner that night, and then all the kids went ice skating at a temporary rink setup for the holiday season. Cameron wore his belt when he wasn’t letting everybody try it on. “We had a ball,” Meg said.

For Meg, it was a full-circle moment as men approached her again in tears like they did all those years ago at Augusta, overwhelmed by the emotional response they felt of a heart-warming father-son moment.

“Men don’t really cry much, but something about this moment touched them,” she said. “Unfortunately, I think so many men push their boys away too soon and go to the handshake and whatever and aren’t going to embrace them and kiss them and hug them and all that and they miss that or always long for it if they never got it. And seeing Matt and Cam out there, they still hug and embrace and let each other know that they love each other.”

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Just as they will always love Pops.

(Editor’s note: Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour, but he lights up the most when talking about his young daughter, Norah.)

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Golfweek’s Father of the Year is Matt Kuchar, who honored late father at PNC Championship

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