Sergio stays
Fat lady sings on Willett’s reign as king of Augusta
AT AUGUSTA SERGIO GARCIA and Lee Westwood have played in 148 Majors between them without winning one.
It is a statistic that is as enjoyable as toothache for the pair of them. This weekend offers both another opportunity to bury it.
The first half of this Masters has been a survival test and after a second day of turmoil among the swaying pines, Europe’s Ryder Cup grandees are still standing.
They have wobbled like the rest of a wind-buffeted Augusta field but after two rounds in each other’s company, they have another shot at breaking that duck.
Garcia is best placed after an outstanding three-underpar 69 yesterday which gave him a share of the clubhouse lead with Charley Hoffman as the first-round runaway came back to the pack.
But although Westwood slipped back to three over with a 77 – three-putting the last – he also remains within striking distance on a congested leader board.
The honour of ‘best player never to win a Major’ is the sort of back-handed compliment no one wants but it is one Garcia and Westwood have worn for a long time.
Knock on the door sufficient times and it will open apparently but, hard as both have hammered at the trophy room, it has remained stubbornly locked.
That has brought with it a certain fatalism – for Garcia in particular. No one in golf does sloped-shouldered, hangdog despair like the Spaniard.
Yet though yesterday’s treacherous tightrope walk brought its testing moments with the greens quicker than in round one, he kept his temperament on an even keel.
Garcia is in a happy place at present. He is engaged to be married later this year to Angela Akins, an American TV sports reporter, and is playing well. He won his first European Tour event for three years in February in Dubai. EUROPEAN Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn seemed spot-on by saying that Masters champion Danny Willett will be looking forward to getting back to being just plain golfer Danny Willett. It was a tough two days for Willett, starting with Thursday’s opening-round double bogey and bogey to be three over after just two holes before battling his way back to a respectable 73. There was disappointment again at the first yesterday with Willett scoring an eight after his ball came to rest close to the right side of the bunker. It would have been an easy left-