Admittedly I’m a little late in reporting on this while the rest of the golf world was talking about it leading up to the 2019 Mayakoba Classic. (Shout out to Brendan Todd for wins in back-to-back starts…wow.) But given my prior infatuation with the Matt Kuchar/David Ortiz (aka ‘El Tucan’) saga, I would be remiss to not share the latest update leading up to the tournament. In April, I posted what I foolishly thought would be the conclusion to the whole circus here. You can click through all the original posts to put together the whole story if you need to be caught up. Of course, I didn’t even consider that one of the biggest stories in golf would be revisited when the tournament came up on the calendar this year.
Leading into the tournament, the New York Post posted a “catch up” with Ortiz and covered everything from how the eventual payout changed his life, to how the whole “agreement” with Kuchar came together, and how he feels about everything all these months later.
First point of note – once Ortiz finally got paid something respectable, he bought a used BMW. Obviously you buy a slick car when you get some cash. I respect that.
We obviously all know that Mark Steinberg got looped into the chaos via email on Ortiz’s behalf and that’s what sort of kickstarted Kuchar having to pay up. What we didn’t really know was how that whole story progressed behind the scenes. Especially after the comments from Kuchar about how for someone like Ortiz, $5000 is a good day and he wasn’t losing sleep over the deal.
“For a guy who makes $200 a day, a $5,000 week is a really big week,” adding, “I certainly don’t lose any sleep over this.”
That’s when David Lopez, the director of golf at El Camaleon, stepped in and pointed out to Steinberg what was actually happening.
Per the NY Post:
“It was so wrong,” he said. “You can’t say that kind of stuff. It’s extremely racial. It just seemed like every time Matt opened his mouth it kept getting worse and worse and worse.’’
Lopez’s last email to Steinberg said, “You know what — this has become a racial issue.’’
That clearly touched a nerve. Lopez said a couple days after the last email, Ortiz informed him that $45,000 had been deposited into his bank account.
“The [Mayakoba] ownership was pissed,’’ Lopez said. “The ownership was ready to tell Kuchar, ‘Don’t worry … don’t even bother to show up next year.’ They were about to pay Tucan themselves.’’
YIKES. I don’t think anyone ever realized things got this tense! I wonder what Kuchar’s thoughts were when this detail came out?
Credit to El Tucan, this is what he says about Kuchar a year after this whole ordeal:
“Kuchar is a good person,’’ Ortiz said. “I’m not angry. Everything is good. Not paying was not good. But I have no anger.’’
I know I wouldn’t have felt the same. Ole Grudge Bill would be out in full force (and probably still fuming my payout was still less than 5% of the winnings to a multi-millionaire).
One last takeaway I appreciated from the article was the insight into El Tucan’s life and who he is.
He’s is an enterprising businessman. He’s an agronomist (an expert in soil and crop management) who owns a landscaping business with 10 employees. He, too, owns 10 bulls that he sells for food and breeding. He’s married to Bianka with a son, Sebastian, and a daughter, Marjorie, all of whom live in Vera Cruz, a 24-hour drive away. He visits when he can in between caddying.
The guy is hustling to provide a decent life for his family. I bet he doesn’t make $1.3 million over a single week though.
Read the original NY Post story here. It’s really good.
