NAPLES, Fla. — Can Harris English and Matt Kuchar be beaten at the QBE Shootout?
That’s been the question that hasn’t been answered by another pair in the PGA Tour team event very frequently over the years at Tiburón Golf Club at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort.
The pairing, which happened when English substituted for Brandt Snedeker who had to withdraw because of an injury in 2013, has won three times, including by a whopping nine strokes last year in Greg Norman’s tournament. They won by seven in their first year together in 2013, and took first again in 2016.
Eleven other teams will take a swing at them beginning Friday with the scramble in the first round.
“Oh yeah, why not?” said Kevin Na, whose playing with Jason Kokrak, of knocking them off. “I think my team’s better than their team.”
“The way the format is anyone can get hot,” Graeme McDowell said.
“Yeah, they haven’t won every year,” Billy Horschel said.
While the players in each team frequently do end up matching up well because of balancing one player’s strengths with another’s weakness, and teaming up in the right part, Kuchar and English are doing it at a higher level.
“Matt is always down the middle of the fairway and then Harris is an unbelievable ball-striker and he’s developed into a really good putter over the years,” said Jason Day, who won the Shootout a few years ago. “Matt, he’s always been a rock-solid player.”
“They just have a really close relationship,” said Brandt Snedeker, another former Shootout champion. “Matt’s strengths go well with Harris’ strengths. Obviously, the chemistry’s there, and that’s the big thing with this event. If you have the right partner, you don’t worry when you hit a bad shot, you know they’ve got your back.”
They finished well back in 2017, tying for 10th after a poor round in the middle round, the modified alternate shot. Their other finishes besides the wins are seconds in 2014 and 2015. They didn’t play in 2018 or 2019.
So they’re 3-for-6 with two seconds.
“Harris and I have just had a great run and really been fun,” Kuchar said. “Every year I look forward to getting another chance to play with him. So excited to see him bust out with a great year, be on the Ryder Cup team, do some really special things this year.
“It’s been fun to see kind of the evolution of his career and still be able to kind of play alongside him in this event.”
English had a couple of wins this year in addition to the Ryder Cup appearance, and also got to play in Tiger Woods’ Bahamas tournament last week.
“I would like to say it started here,” English said. “We played great here, I think we won by nine shots last year and you can take a lot of that momentum. I feel I was playing great golf going into Maui last year and ended up winning the tournament. You’re always working on things and you can use great weeks like this to work on your game and kind of jump start your 2022.”
English’s length, Kuchar’s accuracy and putting, and English’s development in both have just made the combination work better and better.
“I feel like we complement each other really well,” English said. “We both are really good putters; Matt’s one of the best putters I’ve ever played with and we just seem to hole a lot of putts around this place. He’s obviously a really straight driver, really consistent. I hit it a little further than him so we kind of play off each other. I try to give it a rip on some par 5s and we just stay in a lot of holes.”
Kuchar quipped why the two haven’t played together in the PGA Tour’s relatively new team event, the Zurich Championship in New Orleans.
“That may be the better question,” Kuchar said. “We’re still working on making that work out at some point.
“It’s been a whole lot of fun playing with Harris. I get to see parts of the course I’m not used to seeing, hitting irons I’m not used to hitting into greens and it’s been a great match-up and a great formula.”
English first met Kuchar in 2012 at The Players Championship when he was contending in the third round. English, a rookie, had an inauspicious start, hitting someone with his tee shot on the first hole. The person ended up being OK.
“The guy was okay thankfully, but one of those things as a player, it’s a hard thing to recover from,” Kuchar said. “So I may have had some words of advice on kind of trying to move on. And it’s always a tough situation.”
Kuchar won the Shootout last year with his son Cameron on the bag, and the pair are back together again this year.
“Cameron’s been asking for years and years to caddie and I think he’s always thought he’s bigger than maybe he has been,” Kuchar said “Now he is truly really big and able to caddie with no problem. Cameron’s just a lover of golf and doing well himself with the game.”
Greg Hardwig is a sports reporter for the Naples Daily News and The News-Press. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter: @NDN_Ghardwig, email him at ghardwig@naplesnews.com. Support local journalism with this special subscription offer at https://cm.naplesnews.com/specialoffer/