How Matt McCarty went from 'getting ready' to 'being ready' to win on the PGA Tour
Adam Schupak- PGA Tour pro Matt McCarty has worked with his coach, David Williams, since he was 12 years old.
- McCarty won four times in 10 starts last season, including three Korn Ferry Tour victories and his first PGA Tour title.
- A previous loss on the Korn Ferry Tour is credited with shifting McCarty's mindset from "I think I can" to "I know that I can."
Matt McCarty calls his longtime coach David Williams “The Guru,” a reference to his role as part swing instructor, part philosopher and life coach. They’ve been working together since McCarty was 12. That’s how old the second-year PGA Tour pro was when he first beat his father on the course, leading to McCarty’s old man realizing he had taken him as far as he could in the game.
Just over a year ago, McCarty was competing at the PGA Tour's Sanderson Farms Championship and Williams watched from the comfort of his couch on TV as McCarty prepped for the tournament on the range. He could see him set down his club and pick up his phone and type. An instant later, his phone buzzed with a text from McCarty with a two-word message: “I’m ready.”
It was a surreal experience for Williams to see a text being sent to him in real time on national TV but that wasn’t the main reason for his smile.
“I’ve always told Matt that human beings are the only living organisms in this universe that get ready to do something,” Williams said. “Consider for a minute: a squirrel doesn’t get ready to climb a tree, a bird doesn’t get ready to fly, a plant doesn’t get ready to grow, it grows. Everything that lives can and does what it’s capable of but we have invented this concept of ‘I’m getting ready.’ By definition if you’re getting ready, you’re never ready. You can’t be ready and getting ready at the same time. I had made that distinction a couple of times in the past to Matt so to have him say ‘I’m ready’ meant he wasn’t getting ready anymore.”
When you know, you know. One week later, the 27-year-old Scottsdale, Arizona, native took one look at the lava-rock outcroppings at Black Desert Resort Golf Course in Ivins, Utah, and it reminded him so much of the desert-style courses he grew up on that he told his caddie, “I can win here.” McCarty opened with a 62 and held on for his first Tour title. It capped off what could at first glance be described as a meteoric rise but rather what McCarty described as a slow burn.
After having never won as a professional before last season, he won four times in a span of 10 starts. Three of those victories took place on the Korn Ferry Tour to earn a promotion to the PGA Tour and he picked up where he left off, winning in just his second start in the big leagues. In doing so, he became the first player since Jason Gore in 2005 to win three times on the Korn Ferry Tour and then on the PGA Tour in the same season. McCarty also vaulted from 430th in the world at the start of last year to finishing at No. 46. [He’s currently No. 58.] But it was the one that got away that Williams is convinced set McCarty’s run of success in motion. At the 2024 Ascendant, a Korn Ferry Tour event held at TPC Colorado, McCarty raced into the lead before playing tentatively in the final round. When the putts didn’t drop, he stumbled to a 75 to finish T-5.
“I told him, ‘You’ll win when it’s your time. So don’t let the last round mean more to you than the first three,’” Williams said. “The important lesson that week was he proved he can do it. He crossed a threshold psychologically. As opposed to ‘I think I can,’ it became ‘I know that I can.’ That ignited him for the rest of the year.”
The very next week, McCarty won for the first time at the Price Cutter Charity Championship. At Black Desert Resort a year ago, he held the 54-hole lead just as he had at TPC Colorado and experienced nerves like never before. “The bogey on 12 was my first ‘Oh, crap,’ moment of the round. My lead was down to one,” McCarty recalled.
But this time, he steadied himself with a solid par at 13 and then hit the shot of the tournament, launching a 3-wood off the tee to within 3 feet of the hole at the drivable par-4 14th to set up an eagle en route to posting a final-round 4-under 67 and three-stroke triumph at what is now called the Bank of Utah Championship.
"I feel like I remember more of that round of golf than anyone I've ever played," he said.
McCarty got off to a slow start to his first full season in the big leagues. In 25 starts, he owns nine top-25 finishes and two top-10s, including a T-4 at the RBC Canadian Open, and enters the week No. 84 in the FedEx Cup Fall standings. The evolution of McCarty’s game continues as he played this season in pairings with major winners Jason Day, Gary Woodland and Shane Lowry, the latter of which happened during the third round of the Masters.
“To be in the third to last group at Augusta on Saturday between Rory (McIlroy) and Scottie (Scheffler) was pretty unreal to kind of be in that atmosphere and experience that,” he said.
In addition to continuing to work with Williams, who he can always find on the front left of the McCormick Ranch range in Scottsdale, McCarty hired Hunter Stewart, a data analytics guru for several Tour pros, in August to help him improve his course strategy. He initially pointed out that McCarty had room for improvement with his wedge game, especially from 100-125 yards and on mid-range putting.
“If he gets a sniff he’s going for it, which I love,” Stewart said. “He wins at 20-plus under par. But what can I do to help him when he plays a beefier schedule on Tour and 8-under par is going to win? I don’t want him to lose his identity as an aggressive player, but we’ve got to make sure he isn’t punished for being too aggressive.”
McCarty isn’t afraid to go low as he showed two weeks ago during the final round of the Baycurrent Classic in Japan. He birdied the first eight holes of his back nine before a closing bogey left him settling for shooting 60, or as McCarty put it, “one swing away from 58.”
But it was further confirmation to Williams that McCarty isn’t afraid of the big moment. He recounted a time that McCarty’s junior high school basketball coach approached him on the range at McCormick Ranch and introduced himself. Before they parted ways, Williams posed one final question: when the game was on the line, did McCarty want the ball? His old hoops coach looked at Williams and said, “Every time.”
“You can’t coach that,” Williams said.
And it’s one of several reasons why he’s convinced that McCarty's victory at Black Desert a year ago will be the first of many for his star pupil.