Kuchar not sure how he'll one-up 2010, but he's game to try

For the reigning champion of the PGA Tour money list, Kapalua is the absolutely idyllic place, even in a figurative sense, to open the season.
Perched on the side of a mountain, the views are HDTV, Chamber-of-Commerce spectacular. Whales do belly flops in the distance, palm fronds rustle overhead in the breeze and craggy islands in the atoll are visible on clear days.
Life atop the tour mountain, even a formerly volcanic one, is good. How much actual room remains at the top is another question altogether.
After producing what easily ranked as his career year, fan favorite Matt Kuchar starts anew this week, trying somehow to replicate a 2010 season in which he became one of the tour's breakout players and personalities.

Matt Kuchar enjoyed a career year in 2010 that included 11 top-10 finishes, second in FedEx points. (Getty Images)

"There's not a whole lot of room for improvement as far as the stats are concerned, but in the game of golf, there's so many areas you can get better," Kuchar said in the offseason. "That's one thing I love about the game is that there's always room to get better."
His room is the penthouse suite, but it feels more like a broom closet. How do you better your best?
The tour rechristened the season opener this year, dubbing it the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, or TOC for short. For Kooch, that could just as easily stand for top of chart -- because he was No. 1 in so many notable lists last year, his hardware was hard to track.
He won the Vardon and Byron Nelson trophies for the lowest stroke average, perhaps a bigger honor than earning the money title given the storied names on the former, which dates to 1937. The money championship earned him the Arnold Palmer Award and yet a third figurine for the mantle at his new home on the South Carolina coast.
"I still am in amazement of the results," he said. "The Harry Vardon and the Arnold Palmer, the Byron Nelson -- just spectacular names."
His spectacular game was responsible -- and he isn't wasting time in '11 trying to recapture his form, which began with a third-place finish at Kapalua last year and carried straight through to his first berth on a Ryder Cup team. Kuchar plans to play the first three tournaments of the year, which in golf terms means he is hitting the ground walking.
Almost from the start, the '10 season was surreal in every fashion. Though it has mostly been forgotten, Kuchar played alongside marked man Tiger Woods in the first two rounds at the Masters last year as the former world No. 1 made his comeback from his numbing offseason issues.
Cameras clicked, derogatory banners flew overhead, a few fans muttered. Tiger gritted his teeth and Kuchar smiled. Nothing particularly novel there.
By the end of the year, it was arguable as to which had more completely recast their image, personally and professionally. Woods had his worst pro season, while Kuchar was a steady presence on leaderboards all year, racking up 11 top 10 finishes and winning $3 million for finishing second in the FedEx Cup race.
Kuchar not only beat Woods -- and everybody else -- far more often than not, he won him over elsewhere, too. Woods got involved in Kuchar's weeklong team gag at the Ryder that perfectly underscores the 32-year-old's endearing, marginally goofy nature. The dozen Yanks didn't bring home the trophy from Wales, but funny stories were hardly in short supply, including one that had Kuchar's DNA all over it.
Two of Kuchar's former teammates at Georgia Tech, Carl Forrester and Kris Mikkelsen, were playing in a two-man event a few months ago when the latter executed an insanely tough, and mostly unadvisable, shot from a fairway bunker, causing jaws to drop everywhere. When Mikkelsen climbed out of the bunker and saw what he had done, he put his hands overhead, his thumbs and forefingers touching and forming the shape of a diamond, then slammed his hands to his thighs.

Tournament of Champions

For wrestling fans with long memories and at least a couple of brain cells to rub together, it mimicked the signature gesture of Diamond Dallas Page, once a star in the World Wrestling broadcasts. When Kuchar heard that Mikkelsen had dropped the so-called Diamond Cutter move on a golf course, he took it with him to Wales and told his teammates about it in the U.S. locker room.
"We [at Georgia Tech] weren't big wrestling fans, but the thought of it is funny," Kuchar recalled.
OK, so he might have demonstrated it, too. As is always the case in the U.S. locker room, the ping pong table was again the centerpiece of activity, with Phil Mickelson talking trash to anybody who would listen, if not those trying to ignore him completely. Being a Ryder rookie, Kuchar had to face Lefty for table tennis supremacy.
Kuchar, an underrated athlete who excels at real tennis, absolutely destroyed him.
"He beat everybody," Stewart Cink said. "There was one in particular match where he played against Phil, and Phil was getting frustrated because he doesn't like to lose. I know that surprises everyone here.
"Finally, Phil hit one in the net and just completely lost it, and Kooch did a big Diamond Cutter, while we were all watching. And that was sort of the introduction of the Diamond Cutter and we all wondered what it was."
Kuchar gave them the back story and then unveiled it in an impromptu move during the actual opening match, when he partnered with Cink, who made a crucial 30-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole to cut the legs out from under their European foes. Off on the side of the green, Kuchar executed a Diamond Cutter, outside camera range.
"I don't think I've ever been so excited about a shot that I did not hit," Kuchar laughed.
Woods dropped a Diamond Cutter later in the week, when he was watching another Cink-Kuchar pairing after he had already won his match with Steve Stricker.
"Tiger had won his match and came out and was watching on that hole," Cink said. "And we had both put it to about 25, 30 feet. Kooch goes, 'If one of these putts goes in, Tiger, you gotta drop the Diamond Cutter for us.'"
"I missed mine, but Kooch made it and I turned around in time to see Tiger do the Diamond Cutter. It was kind of weak, though."
Fitting, in that Kuchar by comparison had a truly bedazzling season. He even led the tour in the all-around category, a statistical yardstick that includes the eight most important quantifiable measures of the game. Leading in earnings, stroke average and the overall arithmetic measure, well, it doesn't get a lot better than that.
Sure, pundits would note that he only won once and that he took advantage of the void created when howitzers like Woods, Mickelson and Vijay Singh managed one victory between them. But Kuchar's career had been in a marked ascent long before the Big Three took a knee last year.
As Thomas Edison once said, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Kuchar is fairly familiar with hard hats and lunch pails, having lost his tour card five years ago. He was demoted to the Nationwide Tour, found a new swing coach, Chris O'Connell, clawed his way back and has been improving markedly ever since, all the way to numero uno in earnings, a distinction that carries a five-year tour exemption.
"I think at the moment now, I'm a much more consistent player and I think that shows with a lot of top 10s and only two missed cuts," Kuchar said. "That was the guy I had been striving to be. So the highlights are still probably the same. I think I had the ability to shoot low numbers back then and continue with that same ability, but I feel like now, there's just a great deal more consistency in my game."
His constancy otherwise seemingly never wavers, either. If Kuchar's demeanor had changed through his career downs and ups, it's not exactly evident. He still smiles, regardless.
"I feel like I have not changed," he said. "Some guys, I think, come out to the tour, and it can be rigorous. If it's not going your way, it's tough, because it is your livelihood and you're trying to compete against the best in the world.
"It's a tough thing to do, but I love playing the game of golf, I love being out there, I still feel like a kid. I still remember being a kid and I think some of the more rewarding things are when you are able to see a kid underneath the ropes and either flash him a smile, just let him know that you see him, or when you toss him a golf ball.
"The looks on the kid's face, and you see them run back to their mom or dad and show them the ball, you feel like you made their day. Seeing that expression makes my day, and just makes my world better."

extracted from cbssports.com