National Post (National Edition)
ONE MORE TIME, GARCIA A MAJOR THREAT
SPANIARD FINDS HIMSELF BACK IN THE HUNT FOR AN ELUSIVE WIN AT MASTERS
Sergio Garcia has played himself into contention in a major championship, which is sort of like saying a bunch of lemmings have gathered at the edge of a cliff. Doom generally follows. It was five years ago at this very tournament that Garcia, then 32 years old, suggested he was finished with the whole idea of winning majors.
He’d almost won one as a teenager, but after 13 years of trying and another weekend implosion at the Masters, the Spaniard had seen enough.
“In any major I am not good enough. I have my chances and opportunities and I waste them,” he said.
Those facts were not in dispute: he had played in 60-some majors and placed second four times, but no wins.
“The conclusion is I have to play for second or third place,” he said.
But with his majors winless streak now at 73, Garcia — with his hairline a bit further back and more grey in the stubble on his chin — has every reason to play for the victory now. He started with three birdies on another treacherous day at Augusta National, where the lush fairways were again buffeted by strong winds, and survived a strange scoring error to shoot 69 and sit at 4-under after two rounds, tied in the clubhouse with Charley Hoffman, who went backwards with a secondround 75.
“Things are happening at the moment, so I want to make sure I keep riding that wave,” he said.
This being Sergio Garcia in a major, the move to the top end of the leaderboard was not without drama. While Hoffman was going through a stretch of five bogeys in six holes to give back all of his early fivestroke lead, Garcia was cruising with a lone bogey in his first 27 holes. A wayward drive on the 10th hole caused him to hit a provisional, but he found the original ball and played that one right of the green, followed by a chip and two putts for a bogey.
Except someone recorded it as a triple bogey and for the better part of an hour it was unclear whether Garcia had blown himself up.
Eventually, word from the green jackets came down: bogey. Tut tut, sorry about that, old bean.
“The most important thing was I knew where I stood,” said Garcia. “It was fine.” He has suffered worse in these things.
There is, of course, all kinds of time left for more Sergio-style drama. He’s still the same guy who got into a rivalry with a merciless gallery that teased him about his waggle affliction at the 2002 U.S. Open, still the same guy who missed an eight-foot putt to the win the 2007 Open Championship, then hit the flagstick with his tee shot in the ensuing playoff and saw it ricochet wildly.
“It’s funny how some guys hit the pin and it goes to a foot,” he said that day. “Mine hits the pin and it goes 20 feet away.”
Such hubris was dealt with swiftly by the golf gods, who smote him with another runner-up finish the following year at the PGA Championship, where he dunked his approach into the water on the 70th hole on Sunday.
But a decade after the collapse at Carnoustie, Garcia has been transformed from the whiny brat who never could beat Tiger Woods to a grizzled older fellow who came to Augusta for the 19th time this week as something of an afterthought. He’s dropped out of the top 10 of the world rankings, seen a host of younger players — Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day — win the majors that he could not and saw his countryman Jon Rahm, 22, become widely considered the Spaniard Most Likely to Next Win a Major.
And so, of course he goes out and gets himself into a share of the 36-hole lead — and would have held it alone but for a short birdie miss on the 18th hole. He said on Friday that he was “frustrated” when he made those comments five years ago and that he is more calm now. “I’m working on trying to accept things,” he said. Some times, good shots have bad luck, Garcia said. Somewhere, the golf gods nod knowingly.
Dangerous times await, as Garcia, whose name was being stencilled onto the Claret Jug in 2007, knows rather too well.
He has a history of lousy Saturdays at Augusta, with a third-round scoring average of 75 here, and the leaderboard is littered with guys who have been there in majors and done that: Day, McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose and Adam Scott. But Garcia has put himself there again, at the wise old age of 37, almost two decades after he was slinging balls around a tree at the PGA Championship, scampering up a hill and trying unsuccessfully to stare down Peak Tiger.
He says those doubts about his game are gone. “I feel like I can win not only one (major), but more than one.”
He has 36 holes left, and nothing to change but his legacy.
THINGS ARE HAPPENING AT THE MOMENT, SO I WANT TO MAKE SURE I KEEP RIDING THAT WAVE.