A Caddie and His Son: Nice Father’s Day Story Bogeyed

The world’s most famous smiles: 1) Mona Lisa, 2) The Joker, 3) Matt Kuchar.

OK, so maybe Kuchar’s smile isn’t that famous yet. But he does have the most famous smile in the U.S. Open. Correction: He has the only smile in the U.S. Open.

Golf is not known for its smiley faces. All you have to do to know the players who have one is read a leaderboard. They have names like Fuzzy and Chi Chi.

Most players look like they’re doing the very thing they were trying to avoid when they became professional golfers, working.

Occasionally, a tournament comes along when that attitude is justified. Based on the scores through Saturday’s third round, this is one of them. Playing the Olympic Club is like having a prostate exam.

But the course that brought Hogan and Palmer to their knees couldn’t knock the smile off Kuchar’s face, not even on a day when he bogeyed four consecutive holes on the back nine, shot a six-over par 76 and tumbled from the leaderboard, eight strokes behind leader Payne Stewart.

Kuchar, a Georgia Tech sophomore who qualified to play here when he won the U.S. Amateur last summer, looks like Potsie on “Happy Days.” His demeanor is like that of Richie Cunningham.

“Cornbread!” he said after hitting an errant drive during a practice round here early last week.

“Cornbread?” a playing partner asked.

“If I use a stronger word than that, my parents will ground me,” he said.

His father would know too, because he has been the caddie for his son, just as he did when Kuchar finished as the low amateur this spring in the Masters.

But while Kuchar has carefully avoided trouble here, probably to make sure he could borrow the car Saturday night, his father has been at the center of a controversy.

A successful insurance agent from Orlando, Fla., Peter Kuchar is no Earl Woods. He didn’t put a golf club in his son’s hands at age 2. In fact, Matt didn’t start playing golf until the family upgraded its country-club tennis membership when he was 12. But now that Peter is here, he is determined to have as much fun as his son.

After Matt chipped in from 30 feet for a birdie Friday, Peter leaped into the air and pumped his fist. He pumped his fist a lot, after almost every putt his son sank from more than three feet.

That, apparently, is poor form for a caddie. Caddies sometimes break out and become almost as famous as the golfers, caddies like Tiger Woods’ Fluff Cowan. For the most part, though, they’re supposed to be no more obtrusive than the butler who delivers a snifter of cognac to the study.

As someone who doesn’t make his living as a caddie, Peter also chooses the wrong place to stand occasionally. Both of Matt’s playing partners Thursday and Friday, Justin Leonard and Ernie Els, had to redirect him at least once.

You didn’t have to be a body linguist to know Leonard was irritated.

Asked about Peter after the second round, Leonard said, “Next question.”

After a couple of more questions, he returned to the subject, saying, “It does me no good to answer that question. Do you understand?”

His feelings became clearer later, when he told a reporter: “The distractions are usually outside the ropes. The last two days, the distractions have been inside the ropes.”

Informed of Leonard’s pique, Peter said, “I don’t care.”

Matt defended his father, saying, “I think Dad does a good job, very good golf etiquette. He gets excited after I make a putt or hit a shot. But the other players have time to calm down themselves and let the crowd subside. So I definitely think it’s not a distraction.

“He’s been really good for me. He keeps me relaxed and having him on the bag, seeing him get excited, is just a lot of fun for both of us, a lot of fun for me to watch him.”

It could be Leonard took out his frustration on the older Kuchar because of the number done on him by the younger Kuchar. Through two rounds, Kuchar was at one-under 139, five strokes ahead of defending U.S. Open champion Els and six strokes ahead of British Open champion Leonard.

“I haven’t been beaten by amateurs in a long time,” Els said.

Forgive him if he felt as though he’d been hustled. Kuchar is like the guy who walks into a pool hall, asks which end of the stick he’s supposed to hold and then runs the table.

When he met Tiger on the first tee box in the first round of the Masters, you half expected Kuchar to stutter, “Mr. Woods, you’re my biggest fan. Uh, I mean. . . .”

Then he shot 72, one stroke higher than the man who won the tournament by 12 the year before.

No matter what the other players think of him, the gallery here has adopted him as a favorite son.

“Kooch,” the fans shouted during Saturday’s third round.

“Koo-kook-a-rooch.”

He rewarded them with smiles.

And not much more.

He was still in contention after 13 holes at one-over par and looked as though he was about to go to even when he three-putted at No. 14 for a bogey.

“It was my first real opportunity to birdie, and I just goosed it,” he said. “It was a letdown, and I got on the bogey train from there.”

With bogeys on 15, 16 and 17, suddenly the men were separated from the boy, the pros from the amateur.

That’s the U.S. Open leaderboard for you. Players who are just happy to be there aren’t there very long.

It could have been a great story today--Kuchar becoming the first amateur to win the U.S. Open since 1933, on not only his 20th birthday but also Father’s Day, with his father as his caddie.

It’s not going to happen.

Cornbread.