Garcia hoping to get game back on track at site of Spaniard's biggest victory
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Judging by his recent performances, it is quite easy to forget that not too long ago, Sergio Garcia had a chance to overtake Tiger Woods for the world's No. 1 ranking in golf.
The leap to the top would require a victory at the CA Championship at Doral for the Spaniard back in March. A Garcia win needed to be combined with a lackluster finish by Woods, the latter far more remote a possibility than the former.
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Since a T-13 finish at the Honda Classic in early March, Sergio Garcia hasn't been inside the top-25 at any tournament since.
As it turned out, Woods tied for ninth, so Garcia could not have ascended to the top spot anyway.
But it is interesting that Garcia has been in a slump ever since. He tied for 31st at Doral and has not contended in any tournament. He is coming off a missed cut at the Quail Hollow Championship, where he shot a second-round 78.
Before that, he tied for 38th at the Masters, where he shot 75-74 on the weekend, then walked off complaining about Augusta National. And that came a week after a final-round 81 at the Shell Houston Open.
"I think that there's obviously a couple of things missing," Garcia said at TPC Sawgrass, where he begins defense of his Players Championship title Thursday. "I obviously am not feeling 100 percent with my game at the moment, and it shows. I'm just not having a great time on the course. I'm working on trying to change that and see. … I think this is a good place.
"It's a tough course, but it's a good place for me to hopefully turn around and start going in the right direction."
That direction was headed up when Garcia left here a year ago with a playoff victory over Paul Goydos.
For a player who long ago was destined to win multiple major championships, it was his most significant victory. And he kept it up the rest of the year, with a close call at the PGA Championship and a playoff loss at the Tour Championship. Garcia finished the season with the tour's lowest scoring average.
And he kept it going for a time, winning the 2008 HSBC Champions Tournament -- the European Tour's season-opening event for 2009 in November -- then posting two more high finishes in the Middle East.
But since a tie for 13th at the Honda Classic in early March, Garcia has been unable to find the form that brought him to the brink of the No. 1 ranking. He is 153rd on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy and 155th in average putts per green.
The putting problems he seemingly had overcome a year ago with the help of putting guru Stan Utley have returned to the point where Garcia is experimenting with a belly putter again.
"We all go through these things," he said. "It's just a matter of keep going at it and just waiting for things to change, just hold on to something good that will help you get through it. And that's what I'm searching for. I'm sure I'll find it. Hopefully it will take me less time than more, so we'll see. Hopefully this week we'll start going the right way."
If it's any consolation to Garcia, now ranked third in the world, it's that he wasn't exactly on a roll heading into last year's Players. He had failed to finish among the top 10 in eight starts and missed the cut at the Masters.
But he found something with a first-round 66 and made a clutch par-saving putt to get into a playoff with Goydos.
"Tee to green, it's like watching Picasso," Goydos said of Garcia's game. "He's a world-class ballstriker."
Garcia would love nothing more than to hear those kinds of compliments again this week.
"I'm looking forward to coming back and see if I can get some good things going on the course at a place where I've done well and see if I can get my season kind of started a little bit," he said.
Tinkering Tiger
Tiger Woods experimented with a couple of different shafts in his driver last week at Quail Hollow, but he ultimately went back to the Nike driver he had been using. During a Tuesday morning practice round and on the driving range at The Players Championship, Woods was again working with different drivers.
He ranks 136th on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy (57.59 percent) and 29th in driving distance (293.5 yards).
"Yeah, I tried a couple of different shafts last week, trying to get a little better flight to the golf ball, but I went back to my old driver," Woods said. "[Tuesday] morning I was trying different lengths to my driver. Again, stuck with my same old driver, so I haven't changed."
Woods noted that his power has yet to come back after returning from knee surgery and that he is not hitting his driver or his irons as far.
The difference was noticeable during the final round of the Masters, when Phil Mickelson was continually out front.
"I kept having to wait for him to hit, sure," Mickelson joked, later adding he didn't notice much difference in Woods.
"It seems like he has as much speed as he wants to have," Mickelson said.
A look at this week's PGA Tour venue
The TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course has evolved into one of the game's top venues, regardless of how you feel about the man-made qualities that shaped a former swamp into a world-class golf course. It is difficult to say which came first, the elevation of the course or of The Players Championship, but the two are married, giving us one of the game's premier events.
Pete Dye's layout was highly controversial when it opened in 1982, and it took a few years of smoothing out some rough edges for it to be accepted as it is today. The tournament was moved from March to May three years ago, and the change has been accepted as a good one in terms of golf course conditions. It is easier to get it to play hard and fast at this time of year.
"It's different in that it's not naturally blended into the land; it's very artificial," said Mickelson, who won the tournament in 2007. "It's made up, bulldozed, dirt everywhere, but yet shot value has been created that is second to none.
"The quality of the shot-making that's needed is very fair. It changes from hole to hole, there's a great mixture in length of holes, great mixture in shots needed, placements of hazards. It's just very well-thought-through. But it wasn't as though it was a Pine Valley or Cypress Point, where the golf course was nestled into the land so beautifully. It was artificially manufactured, and yet the shots that are required are very traditional."
Bob Harig covers golf for ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.
Birdies and bogeys
Birdies:
1. Sean O'Hair. It didn't take long to bounce back from the disappointment of blowing a 5-shot lead at Bay Hill. O'Hair came from behind to win the Quail Hollow Championship and became just the third player younger than 30 with at least three victories.
2. John Daly. OK, so the clothes he trotted out in Spain are another story, but Big John had a decent performance in his return to competitive golf and shot a final-round 69 to move up the leaderboard. He finished T-31.
3. Quail Hollow setup. The rough was lowered and eyebrows were raised, but the intended result was achieved. Instead of players having no choice but to hack errant tee shots back into play, they had options from the 2-inch-high rough that allowed them to play to the greens. And those greens were rock-hard, providing the course's defense. There were scores to be made, but also plenty of danger.
Bogeys:
1. Adam Scott. Since a tie for second at the Sony Open, Scott -- who was ranked third in the world in June 2008 -- has fallen into a terrible slump. He got bounced in the first round of the Match Play, finished 66th at Doral and has missed four straight cuts. He hasn't shot in the 60s on the PGA Tour since January.
2. Sergio Garcia. The defending Players champion does not come to TPC Sawgrass brimming with confidence. Garcia is coming off a missed cut at Quail Hollow, where he shot a second-round 78. He has yet to contend in a PGA Tour event this year.
3. Anthony Kim. A third-round 78 at Quail Hollow ruined any chance of defending his title and the lone bright spot since January was the 11-birdie second-round performance at the Masters.
Not even the U.S. Open is immune
United States Golf Association officials disclosed this week at media day for the U.S. Open that corporate sales for the event at Bethpage Black on Long Island are off by as much as 20 percent from last year's tournament at Torrey Pines.
"Clearly the state of the economy has affected our hospitality effort," USGA vice president Jim Hyler said.
Because of the drop-off, the USGA is making daily tickets available, unheard of in recent times at the Open. An additional 1,000 to 1,500 tickets will be available for each tournament round.
Spectators can purchase weekly grounds tickets ($400), daily championship-round tickets ($100) and daily practice-round tickets ($40). They will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis starting June 11 through June 14 at the tournament's will call facility. The tournament begins June 18.
A random drawing last year resulted in a sellout of tickets available to the general public, but less demand existed for corporate tickets, hence this opportunity.
Notables
• This is the 36th year of The Players Championship, and no one has ever successfully defended his title. The best finish by a defending champion is a tie for fifth, accomplished three times by Jack Nicklaus (1977), Tom Kite (1990) and Hal Sutton (2001). Only six defending champs have finished in the top 10 the following year.
• Vijay Singh is the defending FedEx Cup champion, yet he has yet to qualify for the season-ending competition. Singh ranks 132nd in the standings (the top 125 qualify) and has gone 11 straight tournaments without finishing among the top 10, his longest such streak since joining the PGA Tour in 1993. Singh has missed four cuts in nine tournaments. He finished 30th at the Masters, where just 50 players made the cut. Singh had knee surgery after the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship and has shot just two rounds in the 60s this year.
• At least it's not a pay cut. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said the purse for The Players Championship would stay the same this year. It will be $9.5 million, with $1.71 million going to the winner.
• Tiger Woods has six straight appearances at The Players Championship without a top-10 finish. He missed last year's tournament due to knee surgery but has not contended since his 2001 victory.
• Last year a total of 65 balls found the water surrounding the island par-3 17th green. And it pays to stay dry if you are to win the tournament. Only two of the 27 winners at the TPC Sawgrass have made a bogey at 17 during the final round -- Steve Elkington in 1991 and Fred Funk in 2005.
• The tournament has attracted 24 of the top 25 in the Official World Golf Ranking, with only England's Lee Westwood, who is 16th, missing. Spain's Alvaro Quiros, who is 26th, also elected not to play.
• Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy, who celebrated his 20th birthday on Monday, is the youngest player in the field. D.A. Weibring, who qualified by winning the Senior Players Championship, is the oldest at age 55.
• Fred Couples is making his 26th Players Championship start, the most of anyone in the field. Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw and Jay Haas share the record with 28 appearances.
• This is where it all began for Kenny Perry a year ago. He was tied for the lead through two rounds, trailed by 1 heading into the final round, then shot 81 to tie for 15th. Still, Perry bounced back the next week, when he lost in a playoff in Atlanta, then won the Memorial later in the month. With four victories in the past year, he has the most of any player during that time. Perry, 48, leads the PGA Tour in scoring average (69.39) and has six top-10s in 10 starts.
Quotable
"Losing sucked at Bay Hill. I mean, that's pretty much to just keep it simple. It pretty much just sucked. It wasn't a matter of I didn't feel like I was going to play well after that. I knew I was going to keep playing well, I was going to keep striking the ball well and it was just a matter of time. But obviously you just -- even though it is tough to lose like that, to lose a 5-shot lead against Tiger, you still learn a lot from it. I think it's just experience. It just gives you more and more experience."
-- Sean O'Hair, after bouncing back from his defeat to Tiger Woods at the Arnold Palmer Invitational to win the Quail Hollow Championship, his third PGA Tour title.
The Players Championship picks
Horse for the course. Jim Furyk. He lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and does all his practicing at the Stadium Course. It's somewhat of a surprise he hasn't won this event. He tied for third in 2006.
Birdie-buster. Sean O'Hair. Other than one missed cut in 10 appearances in 2009, O'Hair has failed to finish outside the top 25, was second to Tiger Woods at Bay Hill and is coming off a victory at Quail Hollow.
Super sleeper. Jeff Klauk. The son of the former TPC superintendent Fred Klauk, Jeff has played as much golf at the Stadium Course as anyone. And he's having a fine rookie year, too.
Winner. Ian Poulter. Coming off a tie for fifth at Wachovia, Poulter earns his first win in the U.S. and becomes just the third European -- but second in a row -- to win the Players.