Matt McCarty was a late bloomer; now he can’t stop winning

IVINS, Utah – Dev Das did not need to even watch.

As Matt McCarty swung driver at the par-5 18th hole, nursing a two-stroke lead at the Black Desert Championship, Das, his old college teammate and longtime caddie, just knew.

“I knew where it was going,” Das said. “I was looking at my buddy; I didn’t even see the shot. Matt can bang fairways.”

Everyone was talking about driving at the first PGA TOUR event in Utah in over 60 years amid stunning black lava crags and red-rock ledges. On a course where crooked tee shots could be fatal, success meant “keeping it between the rocks.”

Not surprisingly, the best drivers rose to the top.

McCarty, who won three times on the Korn Ferry Tour over the summer to earn a promotion to the PGA TOUR, shot a final-round 67 to win the Black Desert by three over Stephan Jaeger (68) and four over Kevin Streelman (69) and Lucas Glover (62)

By winning in just his third PGA TOUR start, McCarty, 26, equaled the feat of Russell Henley, Seve Ballesteros, and Bob Gilder. Only Garrick Higgo (second) and Jim Benepe (first) won faster. The winner also booked spots in The Sentry, the Masters and PGA Championship, and, more immediately, played his way into next week’s Shriners Children’s Open.

How did this happen? In short, good driving, but McCarty had to work at it. He ranked second on the Korn Ferry Tour in driving accuracy (72.67) in 2022, and while splitting fairways was helpful, he knew it wasn’t enough. He had to get longer.

“My first year on Korn Ferry it was somewhat of a disadvantage like how far I was hitting it,” he said, “so I made that a big focus the last couple years. I just was kind of a late bloomer, so just filling out a little bit more, eating more. Started there.

“Working out,” he continued. “Started using the Stack System year and a half ago, so speed training. But just putting more of an emphasis on it. I wanted to do it in a way where I feel like I wasn't losing accuracy and didn't want to change my swing.”

McCarty’s mother, Deanna, who along with his girlfriend, Madi, and agent, Jana Smoley, drove up from Arizona to surprise him in the final round, called him “a really late-bloomer. He’s 6-1 now. He wasn’t even 5 feet in the eighth grade.” (Madi didn’t want to jinx anything, so the three hid in the clubhouse until McCarty got to the 15th hole and looked like a safe bet to win.)

Often the littlest guy in his other sports – baseball, football, and basketball – McCarty soon gave them up for exclusively golf. He had been playing soon after he could walk, and when the family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, at age 10, he began to adapt his game to the intricacies of desert golf. (Learning to hit fairways, for one.) That familiarity, he said, helped him here. So did the fact that on Sunday the players who made the biggest moves, Glover and Matti Schmid (solo fifth), each of whom shot 62, were too far back at the start of the day to seriously threaten him.

In the broader sense, though, McCarty won because he had the courage to take a hard look at his biggest deficiency – his lack of length – and address it.

Fittingly, it was a tee shot that told the story of the tournament, McCarty’s 310-yard, left-to-right tracer with a 3-wood that cozied up to 3 1/2 feet from the pin at the drivable, par-4 14th hole. After starting the day with a two-shot lead but seeing it cut to one with a nervous-looking bogey two holes before, McCarty rolled in the eagle putt.

Golf’s hottest new young player was three ahead with four holes to play and cruised from there.

Oddly, McCarty, who won only once at Santa Clara University, has now won four times in his last 10 starts on the PGA TOUR (two) and Korn Ferry Tour (eight).

“Matt has continued to treat this more as a profession over the last two or three years,” said Andrew Larkin, the men’s golf coach at Santa Clara, where McCarty was an all-West Coast Conference performer. “He’s looking at the way he trains, eats, sleeps; the stats. Match that with the skill set that he has, and he’s shown he has what it takes to compete at that level.”

McCarty became the first player to win three times on the Korn Ferry Tour and then on the PGA TOUR in the same season since Jason Gore in 2005.

In so doing, McCarty further blurred the line between the two tours.

“I guess it’s kind of when it rains it pours right now for me,” he said. “This week I kind of told myself if I can win out there on the Korn Ferry you can win out here.”

After a good-but-not-great college career and a ho-hum start to his pro career, late bloomer McCarty, it seems, can win anywhere. Considering his next stop is Vegas, you’d like to be him.