Peter Kuchar, father of PGA Tour's Matt Kuchar, dead at 74

AI-assisted summary
• Peter Kuchar, father of nine-time PGA Tour winner Matt Kuchar, has died at age 73.
• The elder Kuchar, a former top-ranked tennis player in Florida, introduced Matt to golf and caddied for him at the 1997 U.S. Amateur, which Matt won.
• Peter Kuchar later became a familiar face to golf fans as he caddied for Matt at multiple PNC Championships, a father-son tournament.
• Peter Kuchar is survived by his wife, Meg, daughter, Rebecca, and son, Matt.

Tiger Woods isn’t the only PGA Tour pro with a heavy heart this week after losing a parent. One day after Woods announced that his mother, Kultida, had died, Golfweek has learned that Peter Kuchar, the father of nine-time Tour winner Matt Kuchar also died on Tuesday.

Matt wrote in a text to Golfweek that his parents were on a cruise to St. Bart's to celebrate his mother, Meg's, 70th birthday. Matt's sister, Rebecca, posted on Facebook that he suffered a heart attack while swimming.

“My Pop was a huge fan of sport and passed on his love of competition to me,” Matt said in a statement to Golf Channel.

Peter Kuchar was a life insurance salesman and at one time was ranked No. 1 in doubles in the state of Florida. But it was in golf that his son excelled most. He and Matt learned golf together at Heathrow Country Club outside of Orlando. 

“I remember every day after high school getting dropped off at the driving range and I’d hit balls,” Matt recounted to Orlando’s Spectrum 13 TV. “When my dad was done with work we’d go out and play nine holes.”

Peter caddied for his son when he won the 1997 U.S. Amateur at Cog Hill near Chicago.

“He made everything he looked at and that was really fun, it made my job easy,” Peter said of being on the bag at the U.S. Amateur.

He developed a reputation for his boisterous celebrations as Matt played at the Masters and U.S. Open and made a name for himself with an impressive amateur run. Peter hung up his caddie bib once Matt turned professional and was Matt’s biggest cheerleader (along with Meg.) Matt won the 2012 Players Championship among nine titles and competed in the 1999 Walker Cup, four Ryder Cups and five Presidents Cups. He withdrew from this week's WM Phoenix Open.

In 2018, Matt and Peter teamed up to compete in the PNC Championship, which resulted in this humorous story that Peter told of receiving an email from Matt that said simply, “Get Ready!”

“I ran into Jim Furyk at TPC (Sawgrass) and he said ‘I hear you are playing in the Father-Son,’ I said ‘I’m not sure that that’s true,’” Peter recalled.

He initially missed the attachment on that email that listed the tournament's participants. Peter served as caddie for his grandsons in the two-person team exhibition in Orlando the past several years as Matt moved on to playing with sons Cameron and Carson in the event, including in the most rendition in December.

“There is a photograph of he and I on the fairway just after an approach shot,” Matt said of his favorite moment. “I can’t believe there are that many people that we were in front of playing together as a team.”

Peter had moved to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, later in life and was a regular competitor at TPC Sawgrass with The Munchkins, and often broke his age. For the last nine years, he served as co-chairman of the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity tournament (with Meg), an event that raised more than $160,000 annually. [This year's tournament is scheduled for Oct. 6 at the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club.] In recent years, he'd become a pickle ball fanatic. He was 74.

"He will be missed more than words can express,” Matt said.