MASTERS SPECIAL:
The final round shootout is what spooked Garcia in the past
It was the combination that did it. A flurry of blows across three holes to which Sergio Garcia had no answer. He was three shots clear. He was in control. He was closing in on his first major, at the 74th time of asking. And he did nothing wrong. Par three. Par four. Par five. Solid golf from the leader of the tournament through six, seven and eight. Keep it like that, Sergio. Keep it right there. Keep cool. Stay strong. It should have been enough. Most afternoons it would have been enough.
Yet Justin Rose shot him a cold look and a quite devastating response. Birdie two, birdie three, birdie four. Hook, jab, hook. Having soaked up all that Garcia could throw at him as the round began, he shook his head in mockery, as fighters do. Is that all you’ve got? You never got me down, Sergio. You see me? Not a scratch. the pair were level now, eight under par. Five holes later, Rose led Garcia by two shots.
‘I look into their eyes, I pat them on the back, I shake their hand, I wish them well,’ said Seve Ballesteros. ‘But inside I am saying “I will bury you”.’ Rose is like that. He is personable, unimposing on the outside, but yesterday revealed a core of steel.
Having chipped away at Garcia’s lead, birdie by birdie, he reverted to the par game. Garcia, 19 holes without a bogey around Augusta, blinked. Nervy off the tee and to the right of the green on ten. Bogey. Wild off the tee on 11 and behind a big tree. Another bogey.
Now it was Rose in command. Garcia didn’t even have second spot to himself, briefly, as thomas Pieters closed in. He looked punchy in his green ensemble, perhaps selected as a confident statement to match the jacket he intended winning.
Yesterday would have been Ballesteros’ 60th birthday and Garcia, as his countryman, must have grown exhausted at being asked if he would honour the great man with his first Major tournament win.
Garcia said all the right things but deep down must have wondered, too, whether he was allowed to do this one for himself. It has, after all, been something of a wait: 74 major championships in all, one behind Lee Westwood for the record number without a win, dating back to Royal Lytham in 1996.
Let a man at least step onto the main stage before making him do requests.
A final round shoot-out brimming with excellence is precisely the position that has in the past left Garcia spooked.
It was painful watching that frailty come to the fore again, as Rose applied his pressure. Garcia had led for three rounds at the 2007 Open, before falling to Padraig Harrington in a play-off.
Here, head to head with Rose, Garcia began with two birdies in three holes to open a two shot lead. He was straight, he was bold, he was assured. He was everything Garcia tends not to be in these circumstances. No wonder the scorer mistook him for a playing partner, Shane Lowry, on Friday.
It was at Augusta in 2012 that Garcia appeared to write off what remained of his professional career. He has a different, less deferential, attitude to this place than his contemporaries, old and new. this week he said his relationship with the season’s first major had ‘improved’. For there to be room for improvement meant it wasn’t perfect to begin with; and every player here buys into the line that Augusta is heaven on earth.
Except one. In 2009, Garcia came close to blasphemy by announcing he didn’t actually like the course, that it was too tricky and unfair. then he chose the hallowed ground when dismissing his chances of ever winning a major. “I’m not good enough; I don’t have the thing I need to have,” Garcia said, having followed a promising 68 with 75. “I need to play for s econd or third place. In any major, I have my chances and I waste them. I wish I could tell you I’m ready to win, but I really don’t know.” Some were ready to revisit those doubts as Garcia’s tee shot on the 13th ended in an azalea bush. He dropped out for a penalty shot, an unplayable lie, yet scrambled to make par and remain in contention.
there remains something noble about Garcia, 37 years old, 74 majors down, and still out there, still searching for that first, precious victory, still competing. He talks as if he should have retired; he played here as if his life depended on it. He birdied two of the first three holes and after five had three on Rose, and four on the best of the rest of the field.
Not that it will have felt anything less than stifling still for Garcia in the Augusta sun, as visions of a triumphant destiny entered his mind. And then shadows. As others fell away, the match turned into something akin to a Ryder Cup blue-on-blue event. two Europeans against each other; friendly fire on each hole.
Ben Crenshaw said that having spent time on the range this week, he had never seen a player striking the ball better than Garcia, and he is certainly a changed man over the last year. His relationship with fiancée Angela Akins has certainly helped calm him, as has a fitness regime that has allowed him to stay competitive with the next generation. While tiger Woods, the gym bunny, labours at home once more, having missed three of the last four Masters through injury, Garcia marches on, having kept fit throughout much of his career with little more than dietary denial and games of football and tennis.
Even to here represents a comeback of sorts. At the time of Rory McIlroy’s US Open win in 2011 Garcia had dropped to 75th in the world rankings and needed to qualify for the event by travelling to tunica National in Mississippi – a humiliation he had vowed he would never endure.
Now he is 11th in the world, having turned his game – if not his luck – around. He says he is more composed now, more accepting of golf’s inconsistencies, and his own, too. there will be good breaks and bad breaks around Augusta, good breaks and bad breaks in any round. that it has taken him more than 70 majors to come to terms with this simple truth perhaps explains the many traumas.