Many reckoned he was destined to be the best player never to have won a Major, but Sergio Garcia proved them wrong, writes GARY LEMKE in Compleat Golfer.
The car-park champion would have been nodding his head in approval from the great fairway in the sky. On what would have been Seve Ballesteros’ 60th birthday, a third Spaniard – Sergio Garcia – won the famed Masters Green Jacket.
Garcia, playing at his 74th Major tournament, finally cracked a big one – the 31st international victory of his career – but none were as defining as this Augusta triumph. And, despite being forced to win it on the first playoff hole, after Justin Rose had come from behind to open up a gap and looked the likely champion a couple of holes out, Garcia never had to scramble and recover as spectacularly as Ballesteros did in lifting the Claret Jug at the 1979 Open Championship at Royal Lytham.
In fact, apart from a few jitters down the back nine, it was a very ‘un-Spaniard’ like display.
Now 37, one of the most popular guys on Tour does not have to agonise any longer. ‘It has been such a long time coming. I am so happy,’ Garcia said after out-duelling Rose, with South Africa’s 2011 Masters champion Charl Schwartzel signing off for third spot on his own, three shots behind the Spaniard and the Englishman.
‘To win The Masters on Seve’s 60th birthday and to join him and Jose Maria Olazabal, my two idols in golf, it’s something amazing,’ Garcia said. ‘Jose sent me a text on Wednesday telling me how much he believed in me and what I needed to do – believe in myself, be calm and not let things get to me as I had in the past.’
It was at Augusta in 2012 that Garcia doubted his ability to ever win a Major. ‘I’m not good enough; I don’t have the thing I need to have,’ he said, having followed a promising opening 68 with a 75.
‘I need to play for second or third place. In any Major, I have my chances and I waste them. I wish I could tell you I’m ready to win, but I really don’t know.’
However, as we wrote in the March issue of Compleat Golfer, the only golf magazine in the world to feature Garcia on the cover before The Masters and point to a possible Augusta triumph, the Spaniard had put a lot of his latest surge down to him and his American fiancee, Angela Akins, getting married in June.
‘Meeting Angela has obviously helped me a lot, and we’re very excited about what we’ve got coming up this year and in the future,’ Garcia said after holding off Open champion Henrik Stenson by three shots at the Dubai Desert Classic earlier this year.
‘I’ve never made it a secret with you guys that being happy outside the ropes makes such a difference to me inside them, and we’ve seen that again here this week.’
We wrote that, ‘How true it is that sportspeople achieve better results when they play with a smile on their faces … Now Garcia is in a happy space, perhaps the happiest he has ever been and the results are starting to show on the course. Which makes his current odds of 50-1 for the first Major of 2017, The Masters, seem overly generous right now.’
Although he’s blissfully content off the course, Garcia admitted that his search for greater peace on it remained a project. ‘I think I’m working on trying to accept things … which can happen anywhere. You’ve just got to realise that things are going to happen, and if you manage to do that, you can come out here and compete and have a chance.’
As the crowds flocked to Augusta National to witness the annual final Sunday drama, the locals were shouting for their two twentysomethings, Jordan Spieth and Ricky Fowler, playing in the second-last pairing. They were just ahead of the thirtysomethings Rose and Garcia, but it was apparent soon enough that this would be a day for Europe, not America.
Two Ryder Cup stalwarts ready to fight it out, perhaps not as memorable as last year’s ‘Duel in the Sun II’ between Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson at The Open Championship, but a high-quality showdown nonetheless. Garcia and Rose shot three-under 69s on the day, but the Spaniard once again looked like being ‘The Nearly Man’ after bogeys at the 10th and 11th.
Golf’s aficionados say The Masters only really starts on the back nine on Sunday, and how right they were, again.
On the 13th, a rare errant drive from the Spaniard saw his ball land underneath an azalea bush and he had to take a drop and a one-shot penalty. The door had opened for Rose.
‘In the past, I would have been going, you know, complaining at my caddie,’ Garcia said. ‘You know, why doesn’t the shot go through and whatever.
‘But I was like, well, if that’s what is supposed to happen, let it happen. Let’s try to make a great five here and see if we can put a hell of a finish to have a chance. And if not, we’ll shake Justin’s hand and congratulate him for winning.’
It was another example of that newfound peace he had been talking about.
Rose had opened up a two-shot lead as they exited Amen Corner, before a birdie at the 14th and a magical eagle on 15 – where Rose made birdie – squared things up with three holes to play.
A birdie on the par-three 16th for Rose looked to have sealed his – and Garcia’s – fate, but a five on the 17th for the Englishman locked things up again. When it came to the playoff, Garcia didn’t blink; rolling in his birdie putt and dropping to his knees in triumph.
Make no mistake, Rose is a warrior. From the 1st hole on Sunday you knew how much this meant to him when he sunk a testing putt for par and punched the air. And three successive birdies, starting on the 6th hole, saw him reach the turn in pole position.
But then again, Garcia is no shrinking violet. He’d been pulling the driver out of his bag all day on the tee and bombing it 300-plus yards down the fairway, more often than not as if laser-guided. But there were the nerves, as if all the prophesies were about to come true.
‘I just think his time has passed,’ American Lanny Wadkins had said of Garcia. ‘When you stop and think of the things he’s gone through, I think he has some demons. Big-time winners don’t struggle taking the club away. From a ball-striking perspective, I think he’s one-dimensional. Sergio’s putting stroke looks better, but it doesn’t look as solid as a guy like Adam Scott.’
In 2016 Garcia reckoned he ‘wasn’t going to cave in and die’ if he didn’t win a Major. ‘But it would – and I’m not going to lie – be nice to get at least one.’
Now that he has the one, who would dare bet against him making it two?
Garcia’s 31 wins around the globe include 10 on the PGA Tour and 12 on the European Tour. He has also won Africa’s unofficial ‘Major’, the Nedbank Golf Challenge, twice, in 2001 and 2003. However, none of them will mean as much as strutting around in that Green Jacket.
We know that at The Masters the players don’t get to choose their apparel – unless you’re Tiger Woods, of course, and no clothing sponsors would dare mess with his Sunday red and black – but there seemed to be a certain statement to Garcia’s Sunday gear. The shirt featured green and a tinge of blue, as if picked out just in case a green jacket would fit nicely over it; avoiding a colour clash.
The golfing neutral will have been shouting for Garcia, or Rose, to win on the final day. Besides the romance of it falling on what would have been Ballesteros’ 60th birthday, the Englishman and the Spaniard had stood together for the sport and attended the game’s return to the Olympics in Rio.
Sure, the format was flawed and hopefully it will become more of a team competition, like the World Cup, or a strokeplay-matchplay event, like we saw in Perth earlier this year. But it was important for golf.
In Rio, Rose scored the first hole-in-one along the way to winning the gold medal. Garcia finished eighth after a strong final round, but both took time out of their schedules to represent their countries.
Which is more that can be said for the likes of Spieth, Rory McIlroy and even Schwartzel, all of whom blamed their absence on the Zika virus or family commitments. At the time, the cynics nailed it: there was no prize money on offer and the Olympic Games were an irritation to the modern millionaire professional.
Rose and Garcia bucked the trend and had the time of their lives. And, as if it was sporting karma, they were left to fight it out in the Sunday sun in the first Major of 2017.
Of course, golf has now also coughed up its fifth successive first-time Major champion. Danny Willett started the streak when he won last year’s Masters, Dustin Johnson followed up with victory at the US Open, Stenson held off Mickelson at The Open and then Jimmy Walker claimed The PGA Championship. Now, Garcia has broken his own run of near misses.
Which begs the obvious question: Who will stick their hand up to try to make it six in a row when the US Open comes round in June?
The obvious answer would appear to be Fowler, but the way he fell away in the heat of battle on Masters Sunday will again raise some questions around his own ability to hold it together when the irons are all in the fire.
He’s certainly capable and seems destined to win a Major, but there are enough quality golfers out there who haven’t lifted a big one who can go on and do so in June.
And Garcia has proved that, in this speeded-up world where conversations and dialogue are conducted in 140 Twitter characters, it’s fine if you reach the age of 30 and haven’t yet won a Major. It really is fine.
– This article first appeared in the May issue of Compleat Golfer, now on sale
