PGA TOUR Player of the Year 2019: Breaking down the four candidates

There was a moment, however brief, when it looked like Matt Kuchar was in line for the year of his career. He won at Mayakoba, put some of the tipping scandal behind him, and then he won again at Sony in January. People were literally putting him in line to contend for his first major victory in the year that he turned 41. Heck, early this year, that wouldn’t have shocked me either.

But we need to take a realistic look at what was, without a doubt, a good year, but it was just that. Good. Kuchar never really threatened to be legitimately great this year, and while that sounds cold, it’s more a statement of fact that he didn’t carry it through all year. It’s not a knock, that’s a tough thing to do. But it’s also what you need to do if anybody’s going to name you the PGA TOUR Player of the Year.

In Matt Kuchar’s final five starts of the season, he finished inside the top-25 just once, and that was in the 30-player TOUR Championship, where he tied for 16th. His best major finish was a tie for eighth at the PGA Championship, where he finished nine strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka. Again…very, very good. But not among the ranks of this year’s greats.

I give Matt Kuchar a lot of credit, especially for facing down a surprising amount of drama that threatened his long-standing “Mr. Nice Guy” reputation. In reality, I think a lot of us blew that stuff out of proportion – although that video he made with Sergio Garcia was actually more cringe-worthy than the Match Play debacle itself – but that couldn’t have helped.

At the end of the year, Kuchar just didn’t do enough to be a realistic PGA TOUR Player of the Year contender here. This would be the upset of the century if he won over the next three contenders.