Matt Kuchar was effusive in the praise of his substitute caddie when they won the Mayakoba Classic in Mexico in November.

But not so much, when it came to paying him.

“He was definitely my lucky charm,” Kuchar told reporters after winning the PGA Tour event. “He brought me good luck and, certainly, some extra crowd support, and did a great job as well. He did just what I was hoping for and looking for.”

But the caddie, David Giral Ortiz, recently told Golf.com he was paid just $5,000 by Kuchar, whose breakthrough victory after a four-year drought carried a $1,296,000 payday, reigniting an issue that began to break on social media last month as Kuchar was on the way to a victory in the Sony Open in Hawaii.

Suddenly, Kuchar a genial, popular figure at Waialae Country Club, where galleries chanted “Koooch!…Koooch!” and he finished under a rainbow, is now trying to dig himself out from under a darkening cloud of controversy. One that has cast him in the heretofore unfamiliar role as a miserly multi-millionaire and insensitive figure.

Friday, as the fallout enveloped him on tour in Los Angeles, Kuchar felt compelled to offer a public apology and promise a meeting and more equitable squaring of accounts with Ortiz.

Last month during Sony it was alleged by another golfer that Kuchar paid the caddie $3,000, a fraction of what convention dictates a caddie would receive for his role on the winning bag.

At the time, Kuchar sought to squelch the budding controversy, telling reporters from Golf World and the Golf Channel there was “no story” and the $3,000 figure was inaccurate. At one point, Kuchar even returned to the media room at Waialae to more firmly underline his position.

There were a few under-the-breath comments such as “How much are you going to pay your caddie this time?” as word slowly began to get around at Waialae.

But then things faded until Golf.com tracked down Ortiz in Mexico. The caddie, who regularly works the Mayakoba Resort, where it has been reported $200 is a good day’s earnings. He was hired by Kuchar, a late entry to the tournament, whose regular caddie, John Wood, was unable to make it due to a prior commitment.

Ortiz told Golf.com the agreement had been for $3,000 plus an unspecified percentage of any winnings. Kuchar told the website he had promised Ortiz $1,000 for a missed cut, $2,000 for a made cut, $3,000 for a Top 20 finish and $4,000 for finishing in the top 10.

There was, apparently, no figure set for a victory, something Kuchar hadn’t accomplished since 2014.

Generally, according to convention, caddies receive a base rate and a bonus amount that depends on how much prize money their golfer earns. In the case of a tournament victory, that often comes to 10 percent of the winning purse.

For Ortiz, the 10 percent would have come to nearly $130,000. But he also did not have many of the out-of-pocket costs of regular caddies who travel the tour or the extensive knowledge of his pro.

Still, $5,000 seemed an embarrassingly small sum for someone who has just won nearly $1.3 million for the week and who has earned nearly $46 million in PGA Tour winnings over his career to turn tightfisted over.

“The extra $1,000 was, ‘Thank you — it was a great week.’ Those were the terms. He was in agreement with those terms. That’s where I struggle,” Kuchar told Golf.com “I don’t know what happened. Someone must have said, ‘You need much more.’ ”

“For a guy who makes $200 a day, a $5,000 week is a really big week,” Kuchar had said, missing the bigger picture.

Because, as such, $50,000, the sum Ortiz said he had hoped for, could have been a life-changing amount for his family at little expense to Kuchar.

On the course of public opinion it has cost Kuchar much, much more.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.