He won three times in six starts across two months on the Korn Ferry Tour last season. Those wins made him the 13th player in Korn Ferry Tour history to earn the Three-Victory Promotion. Then, just weeks later, he won on the PGA Tour, in only what was his third start, and earned himself a ticket to the 2025 Masters, THE PLAYERS, and the PGA Championship. But even for a player with that kind of talent, the switch to the PGA Tour hasn’t been smooth sailing.

“The courses are just tougher and more demanding,” PGA Tour rookie Matt McCarty told Shane Bacon and Patrick McDonald on the Golf on CBS podcast. “Especially off the tee, you know, around the greens, even like on the greens, there’s just a little bit more going on. It’s not quite as much of a birdie fest,” McCarty continued, when asked about his “biggest adjustment or learning curve from the Korn Ferry tour to the PGA Tour.”

That shift, from consistently scoring in the 60s to now just making pars, has been the biggest adjustment in McCarty’s rookie season. “You kind of got to learn to be okay with making pars again,” he explained. “Making a few good pars and just keeping a round going… shooting two or three under out here is how you have a good week. On the Korn Ferry, if you’re not shooting six or seven every day, it’s kind of tough to do,” McCarty went on.

And McCarty wasn’t just talking theory. He has lived on both sides of it. When he was on the Korn Ferry Tour, his scoring average for the 2024 season was 68.38 across 92 rounds and 25 starts on Tour. That even earned him the lowest single-season scoring average on the Korn Ferry Tour. But ever since he moved to the PGA Tour this season, his scoring average has gone up to 69.80. It’s not bad for a rookie, but it just proves his point about how demanding the courses are on the PGA Tour.

But surprisingly, for Matt McCarty, tougher courses like Augusta National and TPC Sawgrass have actually suited him better.

In his first appearance in the Masters and the PLAYERS Championship, McCarty finished an impressive T14 & T20, respectively. As he said, “Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just like kind of accuracy off the tee and… putting has been a big strength of mine.” He already ranks 23rd on the overall strokes gained putting stat.

At Augusta National, McCarty shot an impressive 47 pars for the week (tied 13th). That’s not easy to do, especially when it’s your first time and you’re under immense pressure to perform. But weirdly for McCarty, “that’s easier to do on a harder course when you know the value of par is high.” And what helped him with that? “Embracing the challenge of playing a harder golf course,” and just hitting it at smaller targets that helped ‘narrow his focus.’

That narrow focus nearly delivered something special earlier this month at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan, where McCarty fired an 11-under 60 in the final round, falling just shy of the magical 58. He finished T14 behind winner Xander Schauffele, but the buzz around his round was real.

But going back to McCarty’s first experience at Augusta, it wasn’t just about him navigating the course brilliantly and producing an impressive result. It was also a crash course on what it really feels like to be thrown into the fire on golf’s biggest stage.

PGA Tour Pro Reflects on His Masters Debut

“So, what was that Saturday like for you?” Shane Bacon asked Matt McCarty on the podcast. “Because I think you were off in like the third to last group… I think Scheffler was ahead of you, Rory behind you… Just getting thrown into the fire like that. How was that?”

McCarty smiled as he remembered it. “Yeah, I mean, it was awesome. Scottie in front of me, Rory behind me, playing with Shane Lowry… it was really cool.” He had shot rounds of 71 & 68 on the first two days, to earn the privilege of playing around some of the best players in the world. But it wasn’t just the leaderboard company that stood out.

It was also the chaos and intensity of a Saturday at Augusta. “That first big experience of, you know, having all the crowds kind of moving around and learning how to deal with that,” McCarty quipped. But despite it being his debut appearance and his first time playing in front of such a big crowd, he played solidly. “I think I had 15 pars in a row…” McCarty claimed. To be correct, he actually had 12 pars in a row, but birdied the 13th and followed it with two more pars.

But all that effort went to vain as he “rinsed one in the water on 16, made like a terrible double, and finished four over” on the last three holes. “So it was tough,” he admitted. “Maybe kind of pressed a little bit too much at the end.” Still, that day wasn’t about the scorecard. “Honestly, I learned a lot from that day… I think for my first time kind of being in that position, I handled it pretty well overall. And sometimes that’s just golf and how it goes, you know,” McCarty added.