I am really beginning to like Sergio Garcia.
When he started out, he was this cocky punk that thought the world owed him everything and that he would just go out and get it. He was a punk. And not a very nice punk. I remember wishing that he would mess up his putt to win the British Open at Carnoustie in 2007 – or was it 2008? The one that Padraig won. And he missed it badly and ended up losing out to Padraig.
But you know, over the years he has mellowed and now I am beginning to be his fan, because he is SUCH. A. HACKER.
I recall reading his classic interview after this year’s Augusta:
‘I’m not good enough, I don’t have the thing I need to have,’ said Garcia, in an extraordinary post-round interview with the Spanish press.
When the stunned group asked whether he meant winning the Masters, he replied: ‘Any major. In 13 years I have come to the conclusion that I need to play for second or third place.’
In the complex psychological world of top-class professional golf, did he mean if he stopped thinking about winning, it might actually happen?
Two eyewitnesses didn’t get that impression.
At one point, Garcia implored them: ‘Tell me something I can do. I had my chances and opportunities and I wasted them. I have no more options. I wasted my options.’
Classic. I love this guy now.
It’s like how Bubba just went on rambling after the first round at the Olympic:
Q. Is it a good golf course for the championship?
BUBBA WATSON: Yeah, just not good for me. It’s a lot better than I am. That golf course is too tough for me. But we got another day to try to fit and but there’s you’re always going to have guys that shoot low. Tiger Woods is always going to shoot low. Other guys will play good and Tiger going to play good.
This is a dude that won at Augusta. “Too tough for me”?
Is this what the new generation golfers are? Bunch of pansies that get beaten up by “a course”? WTF? Have you ever heard Tiger say anything like that? He’d rather eat dog shit than to admit the course is better than him. He wrote and told it to me himself when I emailed him a while ago:
Q. Tiger, with your swing resembling Jim Furyk on epilepsy, do you think you can now say, you can’t really play any course on the PGA tour now?
Tiger: I’d rather eat dog shit.
OK, leaving you with our favourite hacker son, El Matador, Sergio Garcia, and his hammer of justice on the microphone (what did the mic do???!)