After playing two rounds, Matt Hubbard has taken one of the leading positions on the PGA Championship leaderboard. The 34-year-old pro is only 36 holes away from lifting the maiden trophy on the PGA Tour. It was about time that Hubbard showed what he was capable of. And at Valhalla, after carding two rounds of 65 and 68, Hubbard has tied for the fourth.

He is only three strokes behind Xander Schauffele’s 12-under lead. If things turn out to be better on the moving day, Hubbard may lead the PGA Championship for his major win. The possible change could be because of Matt Picanso, who, just like Hubbard, was once a professional golfer.

Matt Picanso’s early life and education 

Matt Picanso was born in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 7, 1982. Picanso was one of the two children of Doug and Diana, the other being his brother, Brett Picanso. The 41-year-old started his education at Stockdale High School. As a teenager, Picanso was more intrigued by baseball but started playing golf in 1999, his senior year of high school.

Picanso love for baseball triumphed over his love for golf, as he stopped pursuing golf in 2000 after his graduation. Rather, he found himself a spot on a baseball team and traveled to Cal Poly to play and learn the game better. However, his time with baseball was short-lived and Picanso turned his attention to golf once again. He dropped out of Cal Poly and was admitted to Bakersfield College.

The community college used to compete in the California Community Colleges Athletic Association, which revived Picanso’s passion for golf. The then-amateur player decided to become a team member of the college golf team. In the first year, he was a sixth-man freshman but by the next, Picanso was the conference player of the year and the star of his team.

The 41-year-old was finding his groove with golf and wanted to transfer to Division-I Cal State-Bakersfield, but his poor grades couldn’t grant the wish. Having reached a deadlock, Picanso was left ashore without any plan. And then calamity struck, and he left golf in hopes of never playing again.

Matt Picanso’s relationship with golf

At the age of 21, Matt Picanso lost his godfather to suicide. Greif stricken and lost, the golfer left golf and started doing menial jobs. He told the PGA Tour that during the four and a half years he left golf for, he did “almost every manual labor job there” in Bakersfield. Picanso did roofing, and bartending, and was even a pool boy.

But the stint that stood out the most was working in an oil field for six months. Picanso recalled those days and said, “Fourteen days on, seven off. You’re out there, sitting in a trailer in the middle of nowhere by yourself monitoring gauges on a well.” After nearly five years of break from golf, maybe this loneliness gravitated him back to the sport.

By the age of 26, Picanso wanted to play golf again, and this time he was determined to turn professional. He got himself admitted to the Golf Academy of America in San Diego, misunderstanding it as an institution for aspiring golfers. The misunderstanding taught Picanso a lot and he landed an assistant position at The Crossings in Carlsbad because of it.

After taking the job, Picanso could fund playing on the local Golden State Tour. After playing for years on mini-tours, in 2013, at the age of 30, he turned professional. The 41-year-old has won more than 20 plus multi-day events and more than 50 times on mini-tours. The Irvine resident has now become a sort of legend on local tours for his perseverance and talent.

Moreover, after his success in the mini-leagues, Picanso also made his way to developmental tours like the PGA Tour of Canada and the PGA Tour Latinoamerica. In 2021, Picanso received full membership for the Korn Ferry Tour but he could never capitalize enough to move on to the PGA Tour’s big stage. And now, it seems that Picanso would never play as a professional golfer on the PGA Tour but rather as a caddie. The reason behind him hanging his boots and picking someone’s else bag has to do with his growing family.

Is Matt Picanso married?

The one constant support Matt Picanso had throughout the constant ups and downs that life threw at him was his wife, Sasha Picanso. Although the timeline of the couple’s relationship isn’t public, from Picanso’s outpour of love on social media, it can be seen that he has been madly in love for quite some time.

In October 2021, Picanso popped the question and asked his then-girlfriend to be his wife. Her answer was, unsurprisingly, yes. After a good 10 months, the two tied the knot at the Westlake Village Inn in California. Sash always encouraged Picanso to play golf, even when he didn’t want to. But when he welcomed his first child, Alexandra Evelyn Picanso, in December 2023, the pro decided to prioritize his family and retire.

He then joined Matt Hubbard’s team and the two have been together since the start of the year. Matt Picanso could never win on the PGA Tour as a pro but now as the looper for Hubbard, the chances are that the two will lift their first PGA Tour trophy at the PGA Championship, Valhalla!