Sergio Garcia goes full “Sergio”

Sergio Garcia did what I refer to as “Going Full Sergio” at the Dell Match Play Championship last week. His act is starting to go from entertaining to annoying and pathetic.

Sergio Garcia could be known for any number of achievements. He is a Masters Champion. He is considered one of the best Ryder Cup players of all-time with a 22-12-7 record. He is a Spanish golfing legend. There’s a lot to choose from.

However, between his Battle with the Bunker in Saudi Arabia and now the Quick Rake Catastrophe in Austin, 2019 is quickly becoming the year that will permanently define him as The Spanish Spasm.

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The WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play is a unique event. While most weeks the field is competing against par, this tournament pits Player vs. Player, after pool play, in a single-elimination showdown.

Match Play is a particularly cerebral type of competition where golfers really are playing against each other, not the course. Where Stroke Play is like billiards – every shot is played to set up the next one – Match Play forces the competitors to make decisions based on the other player’s position. It’s more Chess than Billiards.

If Player One goes for a shot and makes it, the pressure is on Player Two to answer. If Player One goes for a shot and misses, Player Two can now play conservatively and still win the hole.

Nowhere does the gamesmanship play out more than on the greens. Typically short putts – two feet or less – are conceded. This happens even when a player must make it to push or win a hole. When putts like this are conceded, the announcers breathlessly note the sportsmanship and reverence for the game on display.

Other times (Hi, Bryson DeChambeau!) players will make their opponent putt gimmes just to rattle their cage. This is seen as uncouth gamesmanship. An attempt to embarrass the opponent unnecessarily.

Either way, it makes for good TV and adds drama to every hole.

The one thing you can’t do is give yourself a putt. It doesn’t matter if it’s hanging on the edge by a blade of grass – until your opponent says, “It’s good”, it’s not good.

Sergio Garcia knows this. You and I know this. Heck, my dog knows this. But my dog wasn’t the one trying to quick rake a putt to halve a hole in the quarterfinals against Matt Kuchar.

Would Kuchar have given him the 5-inch putt? Yes. But he didn’t have time to say it because Sergio had quickly walked six feet to the hole and back-handed the ball, lipping it out.

The rules official intervened and asked if the hole-halving putt was given before he hit it. Sergio Garcia had just assumed it was. He never even looked in Kuchar’s direction. Kuchar, completely honestly, said he wanted to give him the putt, but he hadn’t actually verbalized it before Sergio slapped the ball off the lip of the cup.

The rules are crystal clear in this scenario. As we’ve established, until the putt is given, it’s not good. But Sergio wasn’t about to let a couple hundred years of golf rules and etiquette stop him. No, no, no. This was Matt Kuchar’s fault. He failed to give the putt quickly enough. Never mind that he didn’t have to give anything.

Sergio was livid. Not at himself, of course. Not at the one person responsible for creating this awkward mess. No, he was mad at Matt Kuchar. He was mad at the Rules Official. If my dog had been there, he probably would have been mad at her, too.

To remedy this train wreck of his own making, Sergio proposed a simple solution. With all the grace and humility befitting a Major Champion, he suggested Kuchar forfeit the next hole. I mean, if he REALLY wanted to give him the putt, that’s the only “fair” thing to do, right?

Matt Kuchar responded to the Spicy Spaniard with what I can only assume is an unprintable rejoinder in neither English nor Spanish.

The match went on. Sergio was fuming. At the next hole, he put his ball in the water short of the green. After he dropped, he was lining up a chip when a duck walked onto the green and towards the hole. Sergio proceeded to hit a poor chip and, with a wave of his aggrieved hand, blamed the duck. HE BLAMED THE DUCK!

I would have bet dollars to donuts he was going to take his wedge to that duck right then and there. I could see the crimson-red Shot Tracker tracing the throttled bird, in a cloud of feathers, out over the river.

Alas, PETA was robbed of a glorious funding video.

All of it bags a question. Why? Why is Sergio Garcia so mad? He came upon the scene so many years ago as the Spanish Tiger Slayer. He was the next great one. But it never happened. If he was steely at the Ryder Cup, he was aluminum foil in Major tournaments. His collapses became commonplace.

When he finally won at Augusta, it should have been a turning point. The monkey was off his back. He had not fulfilled his potential, but he hadn’t let it slip away, either. He was as whole as he could be. And that was more whole than most who swing a club for a living. Ryder Cup Champion and Masters Champion. Not bad. Not bad at all.

But I guess that didn’t last long. In 2017 he won the Masters. In 2018 he helped win the Ryder Cup. This year, he’s going for Spaulding Smails Tantrum Cup.

It’s all a good reminder to never go “Full Sergio”. It’s not a good look. And despite any triumphs of your past, it may be the one label that sticks to you the longest.