Matt McCarty was one of the big success stories of men’s professional golf of the 2024 season.
While he may not yet have the profile of a Scottie Scheffler or Xander Schauffele, each of whom grabbed their first share of headlines for their achievements throughout the year, McCarty announced his arrival on the PGA stage in spectacular fashion.
The American won the Black Desert Championship in just his third PGA Tour start, while that success came only a month after he finished top of the Korn Ferry Tour Points List to secure his card.
That was in no small part to three victories on the Korn Ferry Tour during the 2024 season, when he won the Price Cutter Charity Championship, Pinnacle Bank Championship and Albertsons Boise Open in a six-week purple patch to become just the 13th player since 1997 to earn a PGA Tour card via three wins.
Throughout that time, his trusty bagman was Devrath Das, but who is he?
While the pair’s success in 2024 rightly gained plenty of plaudits, they had begun working together long before the best year of McCarty’s career.
In fact, Das had been with McCarty during all three of his Korn Ferry Tour seasons, including in 2023, when he agonizingly missed out on a PGA Tour card after hitting two balls in the water on the final hole of the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, leading to a quadruple bogey and the chance going begging.
The pair’s partnership wasn’t shaken though, and that's because their bond goes deeper than a working relationship alone after they became good friends having met as college teammates at Santa Clara.
McCarty told the Santa Clara Broncos website that persuading Das to become his caddie had helped his transition to professional golf. He said: "It worked out perfect. Being able to have a buddy that could commit to being a full-time person early and trying it out and then going from there, it made it easy for both of us but also less stressful for me, too.
“It's been fun and it made it easier the first year traveling together and the comfortability aspect of being in so many new places, but doing it with a buddy made it great."
Per PGATour.com, the pair’s golf experience isn’t limited to their player-caddie relationship, with the duo also playing golf together during days off, including at Pine Valley Golf Club and TPC Sawgrass.
Given Das’ college golf background, it will come as no surprise that he is a talented player, where he finished with a scoring average of 77.00 during his three years Santa Clara. Before that, he was runner-up in the 2015 California Junior Amateur, while he achieved six top-five finishes on the NCGA Junior Tour.
While it’s McCarty of the two who has established a career on the PGA Tour, Das has undoubtedly played a key role in that early success.
