Kuchar Locks Up Player of the Year … Right?

Is there any doubt left that Matt Kuchard should be the PGA Tour's Player of the Year for 2010? Not in my book.

Kuchar's stellar, seeing-eye 7-iron on the first playoff hole of The Barclays yesterday (check out the PGA Tour's video below) led to a win over Martin Laird — his third tour victory overall — and 2,500 FedEx Cup playoff points. It also has him in position to take the $10 million prize on his semi-home course in Atlanta at the Tour Championship, and puts an exclamation point on what, by any measure, has been a career year for the former Georgia Tech standout.



The smiling, lanky, flat-swinging "Kooch" — I love his simple, easy-to-repeat move, by the way — logged more Top 10 finishes than anyone this year. He also led the tour in all-around stats and scoring average and leads the money list. If his name was Tiger, he'd be a lock for Player of the Year. And so he should be under any name, in a year that produced four different major winners (four of them first-timers) and no clear dominant force … except when you step back and take Kuchar's season-long performance in with a longer lens. The man is 54 under par in eight starts since June. He's set up to be a leader for the American crew at the Ryder Cup in Wales Oct. 1-3, alongside first-timers like Dustin Johnson. He's got a monster "Q" factor among hardcore and casual golf fans alike, and he's squeaky clean as a human being by all accounts.

In other words, he's an apt and deserving standard-bearer for a tour that's taken its P.R. lumps this year. And does anyone now doubt that Kuchar is one of the world's best sticks at this moment?

Let's just hand him the POY hardware right now and watch him nail down the FedEx Cup as well. It's a no-brainer. Nobody else comes close.