A long, tearful road for Garcia
Eighteen years and 71 majors later, more tears for Sergio Garcia.
This time, they were accompanied by a smile.
Sunday at the Masters was a most joyous occasion, far different from when Garcia teed it up in his first major as a pro in the 1999
British Open at Carnoustie.
He was 19 and already heralded as a star and the most likely rival for Tiger Woods. Garcia was low amateur at the Masters that year. He shot 62 at the Byron Nelson Classic and tied for third in his pro debut on the PGA Tour. He won the Irish Open, and the next week he was runner-up to Colin Montgomerie at the Scottish Open.
And then he shot 79-83 at Carnoustie and sobbed on his mother’s shoulder on his way out.
Garcia never would have imagined then how long it would take for him to win a major, and he had reason to believe it might never happen.
“It’s been such a long time coming,” Garcia said after his playoff victory over Justin Rose.
No one had ever played as many majors as Garcia before winning his first one, so those tears were equal parts joy and relief. It showed.
“It was just a lot of things going through my mind,” he said.
Along with the happy reflections of the people around him — including Angela Akins, the former Golf Channel reporter he plans to marry in July — that final burst of emotion was thinking about “moments that unfortunately didn’t go the way I wanted.”
Losing hurt, and it reached a point where Garcia acted as though he no longer cared.
That why his comments all week at the Masters that he had changed his attitude, that he was learning to accept bad bounces, was met with skepticism.
“I knew what I was capable of doing, and I believed that I could do it,” he said. “Thanks to that, I was able to do it.”