LOS CABOS, Mexico — Matt Kuchar’s game was en fuego on Saturday at El Cardonal at Diamante until suddenly it wasn’t.
Kuchar was on ‘59 watch’ as he stepped to the tee at the par-4 15th hole. He had carded nine birdies and an eagle, channeling Tiger Woods on the course Woods designed, and gone from two shots behind Camilo Villegas at the start of the day to seven shots clear of him and six in front of the field. That’s when disaster struck.
Kuchar, 45, made a quadruple-bogey eight after snap-hooking his tee shot into the jungle and a bogey at the next while Villegas, 41, went birdie-birdie and Kuchar’s lead was gone. The whole complexion of the World Wide Technology Championship changed in half an hour. At the end of the day, the two 40-something veterans were tied at the top of the leaderboard at 19-under 197. (This marked the first time that two players age 40 or older share the 54-hole lead since Stewart Cink and Ben Crane at the 2017 FedEx St. Jude Classic.)
“Listen, this course has some trickiness to it,” Kuchar said. “That 15th hole is one I think we all have circled I think this could be a big number, and for me it was today.”
Kuchar didn’t even bother to look for his tee shot at 15, calling off the Golf Channel’s Arron Oberholser, who was walking with the group, from searching for the ball.
“One bad swing is probably all I made,” Kuchar said. “That’s a fairway that’s 70 yards wide. I mean, I hit that one in my sleep…and then from there 15 can kind of creep up and kind of get you.”
That it most definitely did. Kuchar’s provisional found the fairway but the wind tugged his next shot left of the green into a collection area with a steep slope to climb to reach the hole. Kuchar’s next two pitch shots both failed to have enough steam and rolled back near his feet and a penalty area.
“I’m not sure how you play that shot with that steep of a bank,” Kuchar conceded. “Clearly I did not execute it.”
So far, Kuchar had taken six shots and still wasn’t on the green.
“I was standing on the green with my caddie,” said Villegas, who used the slope of the green to perfection and hit his approach to 5 feet to set up a birdie that lifted him to 18 under. “We were going, ‘Wow, he could make six, seven, eight, nine.’ It was a tough spot there.”
Kuchar walked off with the dreaded snowman and a five-stroke swing with Villegas on the hole. It was the sixth quadruple bogey (or worse) of his Tour career and first since the final round of the 2019 Genesis Invitational. Asked what Tiger would have said to him about his performance on 15, Kuchar, said, “He’d probably say why don’t you hit it on the right side of the green, said it’s pretty easy.”
The par-3 16th presented more trouble for Kuchar, whose tee shot barely cleared the arroyo fronting the green and was fortunate his ball stayed just inside the red line of the penalty area. He took a hybrid and used a putting stroke and once again struck the ball too softly to climb the slope and watched in horror as it returned to the rough. He switched to a lofted wedge and lobbed his ball 10 feet past the hole but managed to make the putt.
“Biggest shot of the day for me was that putt for bogey,” he said. “That’s one like walking off the green, I think had that not gone, in my head might have hung a little low.”
Kuchar admitted that his head was on the verge of spin mode.
“Certainly I saw things going quickly, but I think I was able to stay about as calm as I’ve ever been when I’ve kind of seen these things start to move as quick as they move,” he said.
Kuchar closed with a pair of pars for a 67, which included holing out from 30 yards with a lob wedge at the first and six birdies in going out in 29 (with a bogey at No. 4.) He had strung together three more birdies in a row beginning at No. 12 before Tiger’s layout got its revenge.
In the grand scheme of things, Kuchar’s still a 54-hole co-leader as he bids for his 10th career PGA Tour title on Sunday and Kuchar, who always plays with a smile on his face, preferred to look at his day as the glass being half full.
“You could look at it multiple different ways,” he said. “I shot 5 under today, played really good golf. I really like the state of my game, so here I am. I’m pretty good at letting that stuff roll off my back.”
Here are four more things to know about the third round of the World Wide Technology Championship.