Garcia climbing back to stage
The woman's legs are strapped to silver braces at the bottom of a wheelchair, her head tilted at an awkward angle as it rests against an arch of padded steel.
From a special accommodations platform above the 18th green at Quail Hollow Club, she can hear the simmer of idle youth rise to a crescendo of idol clamor. It's pro-am Wednesday at the Wachovia Championship in Charlotte, N.C., the city of queens, and a dashing prince is king of the hill, regaling all who approach him on his way up the steep embankment leading back to the clubhouse.
Her neck may be weak, but the woman's mind is sharp, her voice strong. "Sergio!" she shouts, loud enough to be heard over the adolescent din. When caddie Glen Murray points toward the handicapped pavilion, his employer is struck by what he sees -- a moment of clarity in a world of disparity. Separated by no more than 10 yards, their fates could not seem further apart.
The golfer has dated actresses (Jennifer Alba) and tennis stars (Martina Hingis), drives his Ferrari 150 miles per hour, plays four sports in the same afternoon. The woman calling his name requires two tires for transportation and needs 30 minutes to use the restroom, maybe more. How far has she come? How long did it take? When Sergio Garcia climbs halfway up the back end of the bleachers to give her a ball, to touch her hand, to chat while dangling from a steel girder six feet off the ground, you do not ask yourself what is wrong with golf's Boy Wonder.
It's amazing, the stuff you don't see on TV. Six weeks earlier, on what appeared to be the 11th hole in the final round of the Players Championship, Garcia, who was out of contention, imparted too much draw spin on his approach to a green bordered hard on the left by water. His ball took an unforgiving hop off the putting surface and into the fishies, setting off a tantrum so violent that NBC must have chosen not to show it on the "live" telecast.
Garcia ripped off his cap, kicked it, tomahawked his club, made several woe-is-me gestures, then went after the hat again. To those viewing on a soundless feed piped into the media center, it was hard not to laugh or shake your head. Here was this gifted, 24-year-old international superstar -- fastest car, beautiful girlfriends, endless supply of talent -- full of rage and seemingly very troubled, warped not only by a glaring shortage of perspective, but a sense of false entitlement. As if, in golf, there is any other kind.
Good Sergio, bad Sergio. The truth of the matter is, we must learn to accept both, for they clearly are the same person, all the emotional dials stuck on high. We can't adore him one minute and abhor him the next. We can't marvel at the depth of his potential without acknowledging that potential is life's greatest curse, and on occasion, an immense burden only to the man who bears it. Perhaps more than anything, we can't ignore Garcia's chronological entry point in golf history -- the first and most highly acclaimed player to begin his career in Tiger Woods' exhaust fumes.
It all goes a long way to explain the last five years. From Garcia's dazzling pro debut in the spring of 1999 to last month's not-a-week-too-soon triumph at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship, the dull moments have been few and far between. Some might say the same of his victories: four on the PGA Tour, eight official worldwide.
"I definitely would've liked to have been a little bit better, [especially considering] the way I started," Garcia admitted after beating Dudley Hart and Robert Damron in a playoff in Dallas. "You know, we're never satisfied. We always want more. Sometimes maybe we get a bit too greedy."
Almost 2½ years had passed since his last U.S. title, an eternity for a guy who won on the European Tour in his sixth pro start. Ranked fifth in the world in August 2002, Garcia fell deep into the 30s while undergoing a much-publicized swing reconstruction, which amounted to far more than merely reducing his lag at the top. Better posture, higher hands at address, less width on the takeaway -- some divot engineers say they can't see much difference. Sergio suggests they spend less time talking and more time looking at the videotape.
"Riviera, seventh hole," he says, referring to the second round of the 2003 Nissan Open -- the exact point at which he decided something had to be done. "I'd hit it straight down the middle and tried to punch a little 8-iron into the green, a nice little fade. I mean, it just went dead right, probably 35 yards [offline]. My dad, he says, 'If you want, we can go see somebody else.' And I said, 'Dad, I don't need anybody else.'
"He tells me, 'You know, this is a dangerous move.' I told him, 'I don't care. It's time for me to be a really good player, not just a decent player.' I just felt like it was time."
Father and son -- teacher and pupil -- got more analytical than ever. To score more consistently with the short clubs, Sergio had to develop a reliable cut shot. He could no longer pump a wedge from 160 yards and leave his fate in the hands of gravity. He couldn't rank 181st on the tour in driving accuracy, as he did in 2003, because nobody wins at this level by playing from the left rough. It took a year, give or take a thousand practice balls, but the puncher has become a boxer.
The golf ball is finally listening to Sergio, even when he swears at it in Spanish. "My swing is so much more together, so much more compact," he explains. "That makes it more repetitive. I don't depend so much on the rhythm as I did before. The lag is still there, but I have more control."
For all the progress and optimism, it's worth noting that Garcia also ranked 175th in putting last year -- in three full seasons prior to '03, he had finished fourth, 24th and 35th. Sergio doesn't like it when you rag him about his flat stick, but facts are facts. Even in this latest victory, some of his rolls looked like they had been struck by a pitchfork, but hey, if facts are facts, a win also is a win.
So consider Dallas the official Sergio relaunch -- a return to competitive prominence, a reward for the year of mechanical alterations, an emotional rebirth. As his winless stretch dragged into 2004, Garcia's high-strung disposition seemed to be transmitting more negativity than ever. If few people saw the outburst at the Players Championship, his behavior during the final round of the Masters was insufferable -- the Bad Sergio on golf's biggest and most visible stage.
On two separate instances during Sunday's front nine, Garcia became huffy at playing partner Jerry Kelly when Kelly asked who was away -- their balls were almost equidistant to the hole on the fourth green, then again on the seventh. Garcia later became incensed when he said "good shot" to Kelly and didn't hear a response. "It wasn't the Sergio I knew, or thought I knew," Kelly says. "He snapped at me a couple of times."
The two men had become relatively close, making the situation difficult for Kelly to discuss. He knows there are possible implications as it relates to the Ryder Cup, but he also is a man of high principle -- and was paired again with Garcia in Sunday's final group in Dallas. "I waited all week for him to say something, was kind of hoping he would," Kelly says. "Then I thought maybe he'd take care of it when we got to the first tee, and I tried to make light of it. He had these little smiley faces on his ball. I said, 'Oh, smiley faces?' He said, 'Yeah, well I had them at Augusta, too.' And I said, 'Well, at least your ball did.' "
"His response was, 'You worry about yourself, I'll worry about me.' It wasn't nice. He made it clear he wasn't going to apologize when it would have been nice to clear it up early in the week. He obviously feels like he didn't do anything wrong."
They had teed off 10 groups before the leaders on Masters Sunday. Despite the friction, Garcia leapt into peripheral contention with a 66, a round of ballstriking so superb that, given the context of when and where it occurred, ranks as one of his best ever. Although it was a case of too little, too late -- Garcia and Kelly completed play as the leaders began the back nine -- Sergio was only two strokes off the lead when he finished. CBS wanted him in Butler Cabin. He also was asked to come to the media center, although print journalists who needed Garcia could have joined an informal "scrum" session outside with the foreign press.
Things started bad and got worse. A flurry of non-stop action early on the back nine forced CBS to make Garcia wait 20 minutes before he was interviewed by Dick Enberg. By that point, Sergio's lower lip had grown to twice its usual size. Instead of talking about his great round and using it to validate the swing changes, he lamented his poor luck, saying, "I definitely didn't have my best week break-wise." Enberg, a happy-talk legend, tried cajoling, but it was no use. With eagles and birdies flying throughout Amen Corner, Garcia wanted pity in his few awkward minutes with golf's largest TV audience.
He moved on to the media center, where a psychic wasn't needed to pick up on Sergio's mood. First comment from the press: "You seem to be upset with something." Garcia's answer: "It's been going on for a while. I just hope you guys don't come out now saying I'm back, that this is the Sergio we all know, and all that." He continued to grieve a week of bad bounces and what-ifs, at which point the downside of being the game's most talented young player seemed grossly self-imposed.
"I've come in lots of times with a hot head and bit my lip," says Nick Price. "It's a maturity thing. You go into the locker room for five minutes and cool off, then remember that people are listening to every word you say."
Garcia drove off to his rented house in Augusta and watched the tournament's magnificent conclusion, then prepared for the long flight back to Spain -- his first trip home in 2½ months. "I started thinking about it a little bit," he says in Charlotte. "Coming back on the plane, then when I settled down, I realized what I had done. The only thing I can say is, it was one of those stupid things you do sometimes. I wish I could go back in time, but unfortunately I can't. I've got to learn to live with those things."
Actually, he doesn't. For all his endearing qualities -- great manners, terrific core values, an effusive love of kids, a modestly sized ego -- Garcia can be a very different guy on the golf course. His self-absorption and lack of composure inside the ropes have earned him a reputation among his colleagues as being difficult to play with. Nobody glares longer at the 15-footer that burns the right edge, as if some grave miscarriage of justice has transpired. Nobody struggles more with one of the game's great character assets: self-accountability.
Granted, his fellow tour pros can be a sensitive, judgmental bunch. Is Garcia fiercely competitive, driven to achieve the greatness predicted by so many, or is he simply immature? "He's gotta grow up," one veteran player says. "It's all about how you handle it out here. His role model ought to be [New York Yankees shortstop] Derek Jeter. The guy's the captain on the biggest franchise in sports, goes 0 for 30 and gets booed. The media comes up and says, 'Derek, they're booing you. What do you think of that?' And he says, 'Hey, they should boo me. I'm 0 for 30. I'd boo me, too.' "
There was concern about Sergio's attitude in the Garcia camp before the sourpuss sonnet at Augusta National. If the tournament hadn't produced one of the most memorable finishes in golf history, or if Phil Mickelson hadn't won, the interview with Enberg might have gotten a lot more attention. And though he obviously was annoyed CBS made him wait so long before putting him on the air, Garcia refuses to blame the delay for the chip on his shoulder.
As it turned out, the Mickelson afterglow prevented any serious image damage. Asked if he wishes he were more aggressive when advising Garcia on matters involving public perception, Sergio's agent, IMG's Clarke Jones, says, "Are there times I wished stuff didn't happen? Sure, but the media is likely to jump on the negatives. Is there room for improvement? Yeah, I'm not going to argue with that. We had a very constructive conversation after the Masters."
When Garcia turned pro, he signed a management contract with a Miami-based Spaniard named José Marquina, whose firm had no other PGA Tour players. Many of Sergio's day-to-day affairs were handled by Robert Gutierrez, who worked for Marquina but has since started his own business. As Garcia's star power rose, he quickly outgrew Marquina's operation. He signed with IMG at the end of 2000.
According to Gutierrez, who now represents players on several tours, IMG has mishandled Garcia to the point where his career has been compromised. "He went to a transaction-based company that only cares about itself," Gutierrez says. "Here was this guy who was open and happy, and now he's cautious. I love Sergio to death, but IMG took a polished diamond and roughed it up."
Unlike some player-service firms, IMG doesn't have a media-training specialist, someone who helps avoid interview-related double bogeys and dispenses a little grease when needed. Woods learned the hard way early in his career; now he's the best in the game at talking for 45 minutes and not saying anything. "I've been telling them that for years," an IMG client says of the need to create such a position.
Asked about hiring a "transaction-based company" to handle his own affairs, the same player mentions 1999 British Open champ Paul Lawrie, who has been known to groan about not being known. IMG did well to help Lawrie cash in on his major title in the months following the victory, but these days, the taciturn Scot doesn't sign 10 autographs the entire week at a U.S. tournament. "They [IMG] always go for the quick buck," the player says, perhaps forgetting P.T. Barnum would have a hard time selling a guy as inconsistent and charismatically challenged as Lawrie.
As for the "polished diamond" claim, some of Garcia's most erratic behavior occurred while he was under contract to Marquina. Who can forget the hilarious shoe-throwing incident at the World Match Play in late 1999, when Sergio tore off the faulty footwear and fired it at a billboard? His rationalization for such an action was as bad as the traction: "It's not something I should be showing children, but it sometimes happens. What can you do? I am not doing this every day."
A year later, Garcia walked off after nine holes at the European Tour's Volvo Masters pro-am. He'd nearly come to blows with one of his partners, a Spanish businessman named Luis Somoza, over a disagreement about Somoza's yardage to the hole. "Nobody hits me but my dad," Sergio announced, unintentionally incriminating Victor, who is as gentle a soul as his son is volatile.
"He's an emotional kid, and that's what makes him attractive," Jones says. "Great heart, great character, great charisma. He's made some mistakes -- the goal is to minimize them. I'm not going to say he's never going to make mistakes again."
One could even see how all the childish antics have become part of Garica's charm; he's the high-maintenance cartoon character in a game full of low blood pressures. His ridiculous response to a ruling at a 2001 European Tour event in Australia -- he was penalized two strokes for taking a bad drop in the third round, then lost in a playoff to Aaron Baddeley the next day -- was vintage Sergio: "Somebody didn't want me to win, and he did it," referring to rules official John Paramor.
It all leads to a relevant observation: Garcia has played some of his best golf when pushed to a state of maximum agitation, however poorly justified. Immediately after the series of disagreements with Kelly, Sergio ripped through Augusta National's last 12 holes in 8 under, his longest birdie putt measuring no more than 20 feet. "Shot after shot, it was exactly the shape I wanted," he says. "I just couldn't miss."
Extreme Sergio has never played to more vivid effect than at the 2002 U.S. Open. It was the week the waggles went wild -- Garcia's constant regripping of the club and interminable periods over the ball made him an easy target for Bethpage's boisterous galleries. In the rain that Friday afternoon, Garcia responded to the derision by showing his middle finger to the crowd -- a Long Island peace sign hand-delivered right back to the hometown folks.
In the media center afterward, he claimed the USGA would have suspended play in the downpour had Woods been on the course, then went the extra mile to bemoan Tiger's frequently landing on the weather-friendly half of the draw in recent majors. It was a ludicrous whimper, felonious by suggestion, spurred no less by ill will and jealousy than the conventional pangs of youth. "It's tough to beat a guy when he's getting all the breaks," Garcia groused. "If he doesn't win this week, I don't know what else can happen to him."
Yet, there he was Sunday afternoon, teeing off with Woods in the day's final pairing, three strokes off the lead but able to look his arch-nemesis in the eye. By the way, the weather couldn't have been better when Garcia, his deficit reduced to one, whiffed a three-footer for par on the third green. He would never recover, but he can't wait to go back to Long Island, to the Big Apple, to the place where so many people are just like Sergio himself. "I just love that city," he says. "It's the closest thing to Europe you can get here in America. The people say things sometimes that aren't right, but I don't think they mean them. They even talk to their friends like that. I didn't take it [Bethpage] personally."
The longer you think about it, the more it begins to make sense. After months of searching for consistent command of his ball flight, it all comes together on the last day of the Masters, but only after Garcia tangles with Kelly, another headstrong guy who won't back down from anyone. Sergio triple-bogeys the post-round interview process, then returns to the east coast of Spain, where life is a whirlwind of fun and friends, as opposed to his home in Orlando, which he owns largely for the purpose of having a U.S. base.
"Always the golf atmosphere," he says of the Lake Nona residence, where he can count his companions on one hand: Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Justin Rose, Trevor Immelman. "They like to relax with their families, and I get so tensed up. I like to move around. I like to do things."
He returns to the United States three weeks later invaluably refreshed, having overdosed on a diet of tennis and soccer, biking and four-wheeling. Garcia tunes up in Charlotte, then wins in Dallas. And just like that, all is fine in Sergio's world. The boy who began pursuing Woods on a sprint up Medinah's 16th fairway at the 1999 PGA Championship can resume the chase again. The swing changes have worked. The playing field is far more level now.
Mickelson has won a Masters. Vijay Singh is, in the eyes of many, the best player in the world. Woods can't find the fairway, at least not on a regular basis, and Garcia is ready to pounce. Didn't Tiger play his greatest golf ever -- five major titles, 19 total victories in 42 starts -- as soon as the Boy Wonder showed up? Wasn't it the pressure applied by someone four years younger that motivated Woods during that two-year stretch of dominance, not a pack of guys four years older?
The game is on. The future is now. And Sergio Garcia, of course, can't sit still. "I know that if I do well, I will get the attention I deserve," he says. As if we'd have it any other way.
John Hawkins is a senior writer for Golf World magazine
