In surreal scene, Matt Kuchar finishes PGA Tour tournament alone Monday on empty course

(CNN) — Early Monday in Greensboro, North Carolina, a lone golfer walked onto the course at Sedgefield Country Club, far from the glitz and glamour of Paris where many of the world’s best were golfing for Olympic gold.

No, it wasn’t a recreational golfer out for an early 18 holes; it was nine-time PGA Tour champion Matt Kuchar, the only golfer in the field at the Wyndham Championship who hadn’t finished the tournament on Sunday.

Less than 12 hours earlier, Kuchar baffled onlookers when he marked his ball in the 18th rough and walked off the course. In the fading daylight, Kuchar reportedly told the tournament referee that he felt it was too dark to finish the final hole of the tournament and said he was done playing for the day. Kuchar was in a tie for 12th place at the time.

His playing partners, Max Greyserman and Chad Ramey, elected to finish their rounds despite the darkening conditions.

And so it came to be that Kuchar returned to the course alone Monday morning to play six minutes of golf, finishing the 18th hole to cement his 12th place tie.

Greyserman, who had fallen out of the lead after a disastrous quadruple bogey on 14 and a double bogey on 16 dropped him to second place, opted to finish the 18th hole alone. Greyserman made par on the final hole and finished in second place behind tournament winner Aaron Rai, who clinched the championship with a birdie on 18.

Ramey finished tied for 52nd place.

Afterward, speaking to a smattering of reporters, Kuchar apologized for the inconvenience.

“Sorry that you guys had to come out this morning,” Kuchar said sheepishly.

“Nobody wants to be that guy that’s showing up today, one person, one hole. Not even one hole, half a hole to putt. So apologies to the tournament, to everybody that had to come out. I know it stinks, I know the ramifications, I know it stinks. Certainly I apologize to force everybody to come out here.”

The 25-year PGA Tour veteran explained that when he made the decision to stop playing, he thought he was doing Greyserman a favor. Kuchar said he thought Greyserman still had a chance to win the tournament and believed that his stopping would prompt Greyserman to follow suit.

“I did not realize Aaron Rai made birdie on the last,” Kuchar said. “I’m figuring no way Max is going to finish out with a chance to win a tournament. I thought Max for sure had a shot to win, and I thought no way in this situation do you hit this shot, You come back in the morning 100 percent of the time. So I said, well, Max will stop, I’ll stop, kind of make it easy on him.”

Kuchar’s decision to stop playing in the middle of the final hole was ridiculed on social media. Even the PGA Tour’s communications X account appeared to take a cheeky dig at Kuchar with posts published just seven minutes apart.

But Kuchar’s decision may have proven to be a profitable one.

Returning in the early morning light with better visibility, Kuchar requested and was granted line-of-sight relief from a scoreboard and was allowed to drop his ball in the fairway. Kuchar went on to par the 18th hole.

By finishing in a 10-way tie for 12th place, Kuchar was paid $134,695, nearly double what he would have been paid if he had bogeyed the final hole.

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