Matt Kuchar’s Favorite Golf Gambling Story: A Costly First Albatross

Jason Sobel

Updated:

Sep 23, 2021, 02:46 PM EDT

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Golf

Credit:

Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports

The Action Network spoke with several of today’s top professional golfers to find out their favorite personal golf betting stories.

Matt Kuchar

When: Late-1990s
Where: Hawks Ridge GC in Ball Ground, Ga.

To say Kuchar was a successful amateur golfer is an understatement. He won the 1997 U.S. Amateur and the next year earned low-am honors with a T-21 finish at the Masters and a T-14 at the U.S. Open. But he didn’t win everything during those years. In fact, it was a lost bet with a Georgia Tech teammate that still resonates to this day.

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“I distinctly remember losing to my best buddy Carlton Forrester in college. I didn’t have much money to my name, but we were playing for some decent money.

“I was playing great golf, but I was down to Carlton. I doubled the bet on 17, but he birdied to beat me.

“Then I doubled the bet on 18 and he made an albatross.

“That really hurt. That was my first time ever witnessing an albatross and not the one I wanted to see.

“It took me a couple of installments to pay him back. It might have only been 100 bucks total, but that was a couple of installments for me at that time.

Golf Gambling Stories from Legends of the Game

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About the Author

Jason is a Senior Golf Writer for The Action Network. He has covered golf full-time since 2004, previously for ESPN and Golf Channel, winning more than a dozen accolades from the Golf Writers Association of America and four Sports Emmys.

Follow Jason Sobel @JasonSobelTAN on Twitter/X.

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