GARCIA GOES GREEN
Sergio has enjoyed the perks of being the defending champion
AUGUSTA, GA. » Her water broke on March 13, and Angela Akins Garcia was in her Austin, Texas hospital room, just as planned.
Her husband Sergio was on call and nearby, not too busy to go ahead with his media teleconference, a responsibility of all defending Masters champions.
Go ahead, insert your “he finally delivered” joke here.
It is hard to think of an elite player, besides Lee Trevino and Greg Norman, who didn’t win at least one Masters. The perks, like everything else, are unparalleled.
For one thing you get a lifetime pass to every other Masters until you turn 65. You plan the Champions’ Dinner on Tuesday night. And, for that championship year, you can wear the fabric off that green jacket.
No one in Toronto will forget Mike Weir in 2003, barely 24 hours after winning his Masters playoff, dropping the puck at a Maple Leafs-Flyers playoff game in Toronto. The noise didn’t stop for a minute and a half.
But no one has sopped up more drops of Masters euphoria than El Nino.
He wore the jacket to the ceremonial kickoff of a game between Real Madrid and Barcelona. He wore it to Wimbledon. When he and Angela walked into the wedding reception on June 30, there it was again. Not even the presence of Kenny G and his sax could provide a damper.
The winner presents one of his clubs to Augusta National, and Garcia chose the 8-iron that he used to fire his second shot into the 15th green on Sunday. His 5-foot eagle putt brought him even with Justin Rose.
Garcia fell one back when Rose biridied 16, tied him again when Rose bogeyed 17 out of a bunker, and went to a playoff when both missed short putts in the strangling silence of 18. Garcia sank a 12foot birdie on 18 and won his first major championship, at 37.
Much of the world had written off Garcia when Garcia wrote himself off in 2011. He stood behind the Augusta clubhouse and told Spanish reporters he wasn’t made of major stuff.
No one had played in as many Masters, 19, before winning one.
“I think it’s like a doubleedged sword,” Garcia said. “Obviously experience is important because you know where not to hit it. But the beautiful thing about not knowing too much about the course is that you haven’t had too many experiences where you hit it in the water here or in the tree there or something like that. There’s not as much scar tissue.’
Garcia was as battered as everyone else who had to beg for porridge in the midst of Tiger Woods’ tyranny. He had a putt to win the 2008 Open Championship at Carnoustie and went to the knees when the ball did its antigravity dance at the cup. He was razzed by the Bethpage Black troll farm at the 2002 U.S. Open and made the mistake of complaining. He went through public breakups with Martina Hingis and MorganLeigh Norman, Greg’s daughter.
But then he met Angela, who played golf at the U. of Texas and whose father Marty was a Longhorns quarterback.
And then he got to 2017, and led Rose by three on Sunday’s front nine. But when he suffered an unsightly fit of Media Day-caliber golf on the back nine, all hopes disappeared, except his.
On 13 he snap-hooked his drive into an azalea bush and had to take an unplayable. Rose was behind the green in two.
But somehow Garcia sank a par putt and Rose missed a birdie putt, failing to stretch his 2-stroke lead, giving Garcia a tourniquet.
“Thirteen was important,” Garcia said. “But when I made that shot and that eagle on 15, the energy I felt from the patrons there, it’s something I’ve very rarely felt.”
Golf is an unforgiving game but a forgiving profession. Given health, you can contend for 30 years.
Phil Mickelson had not yet hunted down a major when he came here in 2004, and he was 33. He won that one and then four more. He is 47 and has a real chance to win this Masters, too.
Tom Watson nearly won at Turnberry when he was 59, and nobody would be floored if Bernhard Langer, 60, was on Sunday’s leaderboard.
One never knows when contentment will break out. This would have been Garcia’s Year of the Jacket, but on March 14 someone else came forth to steal the show.
“Angela had said we should name the girl after something related to my first grand slam,” Garcia told the Augusta Chronicle. “I said I hoped it wasn’t Shinnecock.”
Instead, she is Azalea.