Revisiting Kevin Sutherland's stunning win at Match Play

Five-time PGA TOUR Champions winner Kevin Sutherland doesn’t have to search his memory long for the best week of his PGA TOUR career.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of his lone PGA TOUR victory, and it was a huge one – the 2002 WGC Accenture Match Play Championship, now known as the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.

“If you’re not gonna win a major then it’s nice to have won a World Golf Championships event,” Sutherland, 57, said Tuesday. “It was in California, which is home, and I played really well that week.

“Some friends were able to come in toward the end of the week and watch. That made it even more special.”

Really well is an understatement from the mild-mannered, oft-understated Sutherland. Playing as a No. 16 seed in the Sam Snead bracket, he took down in succession world No. 3 David Duval, Irishman Paul McGinley, world No. 14 Jim Furyk, world No. 7 David Toms, Brad Faxon and then, in the 36-hole final, Scott McCarron.

The match with Duval went 20 holes. Sutherland’s tournament was over almost before it started. Then an odd thing happened with McGinley, whom Sutherland didn’t know all that well. As soon as they went to shake hands, the European PGA TOUR veteran told him, “Kevin, you can win this thing.”

“It resonated in my brain the entire week,” Sutherland said. “Every morning when I left the hotel to go to the course, I said, ‘Paul thinks I can win this thing, why can’t I?’ I kept reiterating it to myself.

“We were playing a Champions Tour event a while back and I told him about that and he was looking for his cut from the purse!”

McCarron came into the match play event having finished runner-up at the then-Nissan Open the week prior.

“I bogeyed 18 at Riviera to lose to Lenny Mattiace,” McCarron said. “I had that tournament in my hands. And it was one I always wanted to win since I had gone to UCLA and it being one of our home courses. So I was really disappointed to lose at Riv but had been playing very well.”

While Sutherland was making mincemeat of some of the best players in the United States, McCarron was roughing up the rest of the world in the Ben Hogan bracket. As a 12 seed, he beat, in succession, Colin Montgomerie, Mike Weir and No. 1 seed Sergio Garcia before disposing of Tom Lehman. It set up a semifinal match with Paul Azinger, with whom McCarron said he had a “helluva match. It went all the way to 18 and I made a 50-foot bomb to beat him and that was awesome.”

Back then, the final was 36 holes. Sutherland said the format was fine with him. He had played a lot of amateur golf, and often 36-hole match-play finals were the norm.

“I remember playing Scott in the final,” Sutherland said. “It had a different feeling because we had played a lot of golf against each other growing up in Northern California. It was so cool to be playing someone in that final that I had played against in high school.

“It was a good match. I don’t think either of us was ever more than 1- or 2-up.”

McCarron recalled that Sutherland, usually an accurate driver, was having trouble locating the fairways at the La Costa Resort and Spa Course in Carlsbad, California. But damn if he didn’t keep getting out of trouble with relative ease.

“Kevin was driving it all over the place, which was very unusual for him, but he was hitting great iron shots out of the rough,” McCarron said.

They arrived at the 36th hole with Sutherland 1-up. But Sutherland hit his approach shot on the par-4 18th into the front bunker, while McCarron hit a 7-iron to about 12 feet. It looked like the door was somewhat ajar.

“I thought we’d be going extra holes,” McCarron said. “He had a long bunker shot, 55 to 60 yards, to a back pin. Then he hits the bunker shot to like 3 inches. It was one of the best bunker shots I’d ever seen.”

McCarron conceded the putt and narrowly missed his putt for birdie. The match, a WGC title and a check for $1 million belonged to Sutherland.

“I was pretty disappointed to lose, but in the media tent afterward they came up to me and let me know I finished second in the West Coast Swing or some silly thing we had back then and that was worth another $500,000,” McCarron said. “So it helped the sting from losing a little bit.

“That was one I really wanted, but Kevin just outlasted me. But to lose to him … he’s such a great guy and good friend. So I gave Lenny Mattiace his only victory on the PGA TOUR and Kevin his.”

It’s such a unique event to see the top 64 players in the world in a match-play setting. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of Arnold Palmer.

And in 2002, it was much like the NCAA basketball tournament. Survive and advance, or lose and go home. The format changed in 2016 to provide players at least three matches, as each man plays in a four-man pod and the winner of each pod advances to the final 16. Then it’s single-elimination, 18-hole match-play.

“I know at the end of the day match play isn’t the greatest thing for TV,” Sutherland said. “You can lose some of the best players early (such as Sutherland taking out Duval and Peter O’Malley beating Tiger Woods in ’02). I’m sure TV wasn’t loving a Kevin Sutherland-Scott McCarron final. I was totally fine with it.”

What did Sutherland do with the biggest paycheck of his career? Run out and buy a Lamborghini?

“No, nothing like that,” he said. “I don’t have any cool stories. I kept driving my Honda Accord for a while after that.”