See the list of past winners of Golfweek’s Father of the Year<\/a><\/p>\nMatt met his wife, Sybi,\u00a0a tennis player at Georgia Tech and a year ahead of Matt, waiting in line with various athletes for drug testing. They didn\u2019t date in college, but after teaching tennis in San Francisco for a few years upon graduation, she returned to Georgia and they reconnected. Their first date was at the Shark Shootout in Naples, Fla. They were engaged six months later and married a year after their first date. Both of their two sons have followed in the footsteps of one of their parents\u2019 primary sports \u2013 Cameron is headed to Texas Christian University in the fall on a golf scholarship and Carson, 16, is the top-ranked doubles tennis player for his age.<\/p>\n
Matt and Sybi prioritized family, traveling together on the road and homeschooling the boys to keep the family unit together longer than anyone else following the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody told us early on, don’t let school interfere with your child’s education. We took that to heart and thought, there’s so much to learn about life being on the road,\u201d Matt said.<\/p>\n
Just as Matt\u2019s mom used to take him to Fenway Park and for lobster rolls during a tournament in Boston, the Kuchars have always made cultural experiences and exploration a priority, tacking on an extra week during overseas trips and taking their boys surfing in Nicaragua, cutting trails and farming in New Zealand and celebrating Cameron\u2019s fifth birthday in Turkey with a traditional Turkish bath.<\/p>\n
Kuchar made golf fun for his kids<\/p>\n
As for his\u00a0secret to getting his kids interested in sports? Matt did everything he could to make the experience fun. He\u2019d bring baseball gloves and a ball to the range and play catch. Then they\u2019d have BB gun target practice and somewhere in between they\u2019d hit a few balls. On the tennis court, he\u2019d let the boys take aim at him with spongy, low-compression balls.<\/p>\n
Matt and Sybi resisted the temptation to start their boys in one sport when they were young. They feared that too much pressure might make playing a game feel like a job. Both boys were encouraged to play every sport under the sun until they discovered their passion. As he spoke about his parenting style, Matt dropped this gem:\u00a0\u201cI think the best lessons are the ones that are caught and not taught,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Matt described his relationship with Cameron as more than father-son; he\u2019s become a best friend and a training partner in recent years. Matt said he\u2019s always been guided by a philosophy ingrained into him by his father:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m there to raise a boy to become a man,\u201d Matt said.<\/p>\n
Matt sounds the part of the proud papa when he says Cameron is far more talented than he ever was at his age, and describes Cameron as better than most of his contemporaries on Tour when he gets a wedge in his hands. One day, not long ago, he found out just how good Cameron can be when son beat father for the first time. An eagle at 10 and Cameron grabbed a commanding lead. \u201cI said, \u2018Holy cow, and this is the part of my trying to get in his head using the fatherly advantage. I said, \u2018You’re 4 up on me, aren’t you?\u2019 He definitely knew exactly how he stood,\u201d Matt remembered.<\/p>\n
With the deficit whittled to one on the final hole, Cameron had about 10 feet for par.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe made it and instantly broke into this huge smile on his face,\u201d Matt recounted. \u201cIt was a weird feeling because you hope to hold them off as long as possible but at the same time, I was awfully proud and I knew that day was coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s move from St. Simons Island, Georgia, to Tequesta, Florida, was motivated not by golf for Matt and Cameron but rather for a higher level of tennis education and competition for Carson, who has developed his game at Ibis Club under Jay Berger, a former U.S. Davis Cup team member and the father of PGA Tour winner Daniel Berger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was time for a bigger pond for the boys,\u201d Matt said.<\/p>\n
Kuchar gets to spend time with boys on golf course<\/p>\n
He is self-aware enough to know he\u2019s been the big winner of the father-son golf dynamic that has allowed Cameron to be his caddie at the PGA Tour\u2019s Valspar Championship in March and recently at U.S. Open final qualifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell people I feel awfully lucky that my boys both like playing golf,\u201d he said. \u201cThe amount of time I get to spend with them because they like playing golf is priceless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among Matt\u2019s most treasured rounds were those played with four generations of Kuchars \u2013 including his grandfather, Maurice, \u201cBig Kuch,\u201d whose father, also named Peter, was a\u00a0window washer who immigrated from Ukraine during the Bolshevik Revolution. Matt\u2019s biggest win as a pro came at the 2012 Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., not far from where Meg and Peter had lived since 2001 and where Meg remains, and it made him eligible for the PNC Championship.<\/p>\n
Meg said Peter looked forward to that tournament \u201clike nobody’s business\u201d while Sybi called it the favorite week of the year for the boys.\u00a0In 2018, Matt and Peter teamed up to compete in it for the first time, which resulted in this humorous story that Peter told of receiving an email from Matt that said simply, \u201cGet Ready!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI ran into Jim Furyk at TPC (Sawgrass) and he said, \u2018I hear you are playing in the \u2018PNC.\u2019 I said \u2018I\u2019m not sure that that\u2019s true,\u2019\u201d Peter recalled that year.<\/p>\n
He initially missed the attachment on that email that listed the tournament’s participants.\u00a0In that first year, the boys still were too young to play and Peter treasured the memories of sinking some long-range birdie putts. He loved seeing his nameplate on a placard on the range. \u201cHe ate that up with a spoon,\u201d Meg said.<\/p>\n
Loss of father was a huge blow to Kuchar family<\/p>\n
In the ensuing years, Peter lived to be a caddie\u00a0for his grandsons, who alternate playing with Matt. Peter waited for the invitation to arrive with the joy of a child on Christmas morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Peter and Meg were on a cruise in the Virgin Islands and off the coast of St. Barths celebrating Meg\u2019s 70th\u00a0birthday when he went for a swim and had a heart attack on Feb. 4, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was in love with me and happy and whole and healthy and then he was gone in a blink,\u201d Meg said.<\/p>\n
Matt\u00a0was practicing ahead of the WM Phoenix Open when he received a text from his mom that something was wrong. Just two days earlier, Matt spoke with his dad on the phone via FaceTime for the final time.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s always a tomorrow, until there\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe misses his dad,\u201d Meg said. \u201cWe all miss his dad terribly, but God’s been very good in giving us signs from the very beginning that he’s got Peter and he’s got us too.\u201d<\/p>\n
For instance, there was the time when she had to leave St. Barth\u2019s for the next port and a double rainbow appeared in the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat felt like God telling me that he had Peter and I was OK to go,\u201d she recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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At the 2025 PNC Championship, the whole family gathered, including Matt\u2019s sister, Rebecca, for Peter\u2019s favorite week. Meg could feel his presence everywhere. She found it hard to walk into the host hotel and run into people who were unaware of Peter’s passing. But on that final day, she felt her husband\u2019s presence all day long. So, too, did Matt. \u201cIt was beyond what would have felt normal just to play so well,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt like there must have been something extra helping us along.\u201d<\/p>\n
After all the family pictures on the green with their matching champion\u2019s red-leather belts, Matt wasn\u2019t ready to end the celebration. Winning happens too infrequently, and so Matt kept the party going.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of us except my grandson, who was working, ended up checking back into the Ritz and spending an extra night to revel in the joy of the moment,\u201d Meg said.<\/p>\n
Father and son wore their belts out to dinner that night, and then all the kids went ice skating at a temporary rink setup for the holiday season. Cameron wore his belt when he wasn\u2019t letting everybody try it on. \u201cWe had a ball,\u201d Meg said.<\/p>\n
For Meg, it was a full-circle moment as men approached her again in tears like they did all those years ago at Augusta, overwhelmed by the emotional response they felt of a heart-warming father-son moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen don’t really cry much, but something about this moment touched them,\u201d she said. \u201cUnfortunately, I think so many men push their boys away too soon and go to the handshake and whatever and aren’t going to embrace them and kiss them and hug them and all that and they miss that or always long for it if they never got it. And seeing Matt and Cam out there,\u00a0they still hug and embrace and let each other know that they love each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as they will always love Pops.<\/p>\n
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(Editor’s note: Adam Schupak<\/a> is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour, but he lights up the most when talking about his young daughter, Norah.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 20, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET Pro golfer Matt Kuchar has been named Golfweek’s 2026 Father of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[159202,49,48,622,268186,82,128235,164563,162432,268187,159095,159089,268188,159656,159085],"class_list":["post-749922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-accessfree","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sourcegolfweek","tag-sports","tag-sstssportsgolf","tag-sstsngolf","tag-taggolf","tag-tagmatt-kuchar","tag-tagoverall-positive","tag-tagsports-news","tag-tagstetson-university","tag-tagstory-highlights-ai-enabled","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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