I have been penning this column for close to one-quarter of a century and today I will be writing words that I never thought I would write. Sergio Garcia is a major champion. For the past 18 years, Sergio has been a solid professional golfer and there have been times when he has been one of the top 10 golfers in the world. Up close and personal, he is a rock-solid striker of the golf ball who sometimes is able to put it all together and win on a semi-regular basis. After all, he does have 31 professional wins on four different continents. Yet more often than not, that six inches of gray matter between the ears has gotten in the way of his true potential.
Joining the likes of talented linksters such as Tom Kite, Darren Clarke and Mark O’Meara, all of whom took much longer than expected to win that first grand slam title, Sergio Garcia surprised the vast majority of golf fans and pundits to win the 2017 Masters in overtime at the Augusta National Golf Club last Sunday evening. Garcia was locked in a heated battle during the final round with Ryder Cup teammate and past United States Open champion Justin Rose. All others had fallen by the wayside over the course of the earlier portion of Sunday’s play, and for all intents and purposes, Rose and Garcia found themselves in a match play-like situation. Beat the other guy and you will wear the green jacket. For Garcia, who in the heat of the moment had oftentimes faltered on golf’s center stage, it was a new, improved Sergio. He may never again prevail in one of golf’s four majors, but he is no longer the whipping boy for those of us who always felt his failures were because of a lack of mental toughness.
They always say that the Masters truly begins on the final nine on Sunday afternoon. That certainly was the case this time around as Rose and Garcia stood on the 10th tee at Augusta National, tied atop the leader board with no one else within range of their 8-under-par score. Sergio quickly fell two strokes behind as he made bogey-fives on the ultra-difficult 10th and 11th holes. He was two strokes down with seven holes to play. Rose and Garcia avoided the Jordan Spieth syndrome on the watery 12th hole as both golfers two-putted from long distance for par.
Sergio probably felt it was now or never as he attempted to hit a power hook around Rae’s Creek on the 13th hole, hopefully setting up the chance for an eagle-three on the short par-5. However, Sergio overcooked his tee shot, hooked it left of the water hazard and found himself in a thorn bush left of the hazard. Almost every armchair expert watching on television knew exactly what would come next. Sergio would suffer a meltdown, try to do the impossible, succumb to a double-bogey or even a triple-bogey, and have another blowout at a major that he was capable of winning. We had seen it plenty of times during the past 18 years.
Little did we know that we were seeing a brand new Sergio Garcia, one who would channel his inner Seve Ballesteros on the 60th birthday of his late mentor, a two-time Masters champion in 1980 and 1983. Instead of losing his cool and attempting the impossible, Sergio took relief from the bush and received a one-stroke penalty. He then punched his third shot some 85 yards short of the 13th green. He hit his wedge to 9 feet and rolled in the putt for an improbable par. When Justin Rose three-putted from behind the green, the deficit was still two strokes with five holes to play. Garcia’s decision to play safe following his wayward tee shot on the 13th hole allowed him the opportunity to still win the Masters.
The rest of the story was all about a battle of great ball strikers. Garcia birdied the 14th and then made an eagle-three on the 15th. Rose birdied the 15th to keep pace. Both golfers hit great shots to the par-3 16th, and Rose made his putt while Sergio missed his. Up one stroke with two holes to go, Rose improbably gave back his advantage with a sloppy bogey on the 17th. Both golfers had a chance to end it all on the final hole with makeable birdie putts but neither competitor could get his putt to drop. On the first playoff hole, Rose hit his tee shot too far to the right and bogeyed the hole. Needing only to two-putt from eight feet, Sergio made the putt for birdie and suddenly he was no longer the best golfer without a major title.
Afterward, Sergio stated that it was the most calm he had ever felt during the heat of battle at a major championship. More importantly, it was the most intelligent show of course management from the unusually high-strung Spaniard. True, he got himself back atop the leader board because of his birdie and eagle on the back nine, but it was the intelligent, grind-it-out par on the 13th hole that kept him in the game.
For fans of the game, it was a great battle put on by the final twosome, quite similar to the final round of last summer’s British Open battle between Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson. To put it simply, it was a marvelous display of quality ball striking. Sometimes great ball strikers who are not necessarily great putters prevail at the Masters as evidenced by Bernhard Langer’s two green jackets and Vijay Singh’s one. This was not a George Archer, Ben Crenshaw or Jordan Spieth display of great putting. To be quite specific, during the course of the final nine, Justin Rose missed very makeable putts on the 13th, 17th and 18th greens while Sergio Garcia returned the favor with especially weak strokes during the final three holes. Yet both men put their approach shots in great position to make birdies and when they did fail to come through, they were left with short tap-in par putts.
Sergio Garcia now has the major championship title that many people thought he would initially acquire at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah. Stumbles at Bethpage in the 2002 U.S. Open, Carnoustie in overtime at the 2007 British Open, and the 2008 PGA Championship at Oakland Hills are now things of the past. He has now joined his childhood hero, Seve Ballesteros, and his mentor, Jose Maria Olazabal, on the Mount Rushmore of Spanish golf. All three are Masters champions. All three had great world-wide golfing resumes.
During the coming years, golf historians and talking heads will relive Sergio’s dynamic birdie on the 14th hole and his other-worldly eagle on the 15th hole during the final round of the 2017 Masters. We will forever see his final putt, trickling into the cup to guarantee his Masters triumph in overtime. Yet when all is said and done, he won the Masters because he figured out a way to make a par on the 13th hole. At the defining moment of his career, calm prevailed.
