Kevin Kisner gets his redemption at WGC-Dell Match Play

Kevin Kisner makes easy work of Matt Kuchar in the final of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, winning 3&2 a year after suffering a big defeat.

For the second straight year, Kevin Kisner found himself in the final of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. The difference, though, is that this time Kisner is going home with the trophy.

Kisner holed a 20-foot birdie putt on the 16th green to close out Matt Kuchar 3&2 in Sunday’s final match at Austin Country Club. The win is Kisner’s third career PGA Tour title, and first since May 2017.

The final match played out much differently than it did a year ago. In 2018 Kisner dropped six of the first seven holes to Bubba Watson. The match was over by the 12th hole, with Watson winning 7&6, the most lopsided score since the event moved to an 18-hole final in 2011.

Kisner, though, learned a lesson from that defeat. He realized he needed to slow things down in what could be a long day after playing the semifinals in the morning, something he failed to do last year.

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“Last year I felt like I rushed around to get ready to play in the second match,” he said at his post-victory press conference. “I ran around and ate really fast. I ran back out and tried to go through my whole normal routine of an hour to get ready, and that’s just not feasible.”

Instead, Kisner remained calm during the break between the morning and afternoon matches. He admits he only spent 20 minutes on the practice range preparing to play Kuchar, hitting around 20 balls before teeing off. That preparation, he says, made all the difference.

“I think that greatly helped my mental side of the game as much as anything,” he said. “I wasn’t over-hyped for it and just tried to go play a casual round of golf.”

Kisner is now 11-2-1 in this event in the last two years. He also went undefeated at the 2017 Presidents Cup for Team USA. For someone with his match play record, he was surprisingly overlooked when the captain’s picks for last September’s Ryder Cup were made. Kisner finished 14th in the final American standings but was passed over for Tony Finau, who was 15th in points.

But you won’t hear any complaining from Kisner. The 35-year-old South Carolinian isn’t a player prone to theatrics. On Sunday at a frigid Austin Country Club, he took care of his business without the slightest bit of frustration. It seemed as he said, like a casual round of golf. For Kisner, the mental side of match play is much different from in stroke-play events and rewards players who keep their cool.

“I feel like bogeys in a stroke-play event you feel like you can come back from. Here you feel like you’re giving away a hole,” he said. “A hole is a hard thing to attain in match-play. The aspect of the mental side of dealing with that is a lot different.”

After beating Francesco Molinari one-up on the 18th green in the morning’s semifinal, Kisner thoroughly outplayed Kuchar in the afternoon. Kuchar, the winner of this event in 2013, made only two birdies in the final match to go with three bogeys and a double-bogey at the par-three 11th after hitting his tee shot in the water. Kisner took the lead for good at the par-five sixth, getting up-and-down from 100 yards, before finishing the match on the 16h.

Kisner is the first player to make the final match two years in a row since Hunter Mahan in 2012-13. He’s also the first player in the event’s 21-year history to win after finishing runner-up the year before. At 48th in the world, he’s the lowest-ranked player to win since Geoff Ogilvy in 2006. His solid, steady game, though, is perfectly suited for a match-play environment. Whatever his ranking is next year, Kisner has to be a favorite once again. At this point, who would bet against him?