He’ll Pass Up Matching Funds

Everybody knows that weddings are expensive, and Kirk Triplett is paying the price for one Feb. 28, even though it isn’t his own.

Triplett pulled out of next week’s $7-million Accenture Match Play Championship so he could attend the wedding of his best friend in Hawaii. That decision is going to cost Triplett. Only the top 64 players in the rankings qualify for the tournament -- Triplett ranks 42nd -- and players get $35,000 just for showing up. Lose in the second round and you get $75,000. Lose in the third round and you get $115,000. Win the whole thing and it’s worth $1.2 million.

Triplett says he realizes he is passing up the chance to make a lot of money.

He also says, “You have the opportunity to make a lot of money every week. I feel a lot better about myself, come Saturday, if I went to my friend’s wedding.”

The groom, Kevin Hall, is a former teammate of Triplett on the University of Nevada golf team and was the best man at Triplett’s wedding. He is in the insurance business in Reno.

Triplett said he never thought about asking Hall to change the date so it wouldn’t conflict with a $7-million golf tournament.

“I’m just glad he didn’t pick the Masters,” Triplett said.

He acknowledged he could have entered anyway and gone through the motions, just for a paycheck, but dismissed that idea.

“I’m more of a karma kind of guy,” he said. “I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

Triplett has made more than $10 million in his 15-year career and won the 2000 Nissan Open, the first of his two PGA Tour victories. Last year he made $2 million, won the Reno-Tahoe Open and played 25 times, the second-lowest total since he turned pro in 1990.

“If you just based it on, ‘I want to make as much money as I could,’ maybe you could play every single week,” he said. “I’m going to play 25 events this year. It just happens that the Match Play is not going to be one of them.”