■ ON HIS 71ST MAJOR, A BIG WIN FOR SERGIO GARCIA

Sergio Garcia, 37, celebrates at the 82nd Masters in Georgia.

In golf, you basically win with putts. The putt is the knockout punch in boxing. You miss a winning putt, you could lose the tournament.

Justin Rose missed a 12-foot putt yesterday on 18 and lost the 82nd Masters in Augusta, Georgia.

Rose’s winning putt didn’t break left. A complete misread as the ball went arrow-straight. It didn’t even graze the hole.

A Rio Olympic champion last year, the miss reduced Rose the 2013 US Open winner from superstar to super flop. Golf humbles even the best.

With that miss, Rose might have lost the champion’s purse of close to $2 million.

The Masters generally draws the biggest top prize among the years four majors.

Thats because up to the last minute, even seconds before the tournament’s last putt is dropped, additional prize monies are accepted.

Sergio Garcia smelled a bit sweeter yesterday than Rose (pardon the pun) even as they finished with similar drama-laden 69s, sending them to playoff tied at nine-under.

Garcia also fumbled a downhill five-footer on 18 that would have won him the Masters outright.

But unlike Rose, Garcia steeled himself in the replay of the 18th.

Garcia smacked his 73rd tee shot in a virtual xerox of his 72nd drive down the fairway, practically sealing his win in nearly two decades of Masters play.

Thats because earlier, Rose, the demons of that missed winning putt probably dancing unstoppably in his mind, had disastrously driven to the woods.

With no clear view of the green, Rose had to punch out. Bogey.

From 145 yards, Garcia planted his approach to about 10 feet, needing two putts to win his first major after 74 starts.

But theater intervened when the birdie putt dropped, making Garcia the third Spaniard to win the Masters after Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.

“They are my idols my whole life,” said Garcia, who was born the year the late Ballesteros won his first of two Masters in 1980.

Garcia said he had received a text-message from Olazabal on the eve of the final round.

“You can do it. I have always believed in you,” said Olazabal, the parrot-nosed winner in 1994 and 1999.

And doesn’t Sergio, set to marry Angela in July, also have the knack for drama?

He won the day that Ballesteros was born 60 years ago.