Time to Give Sergio Garcia His Due as Future Hall of Famer

For someone who has played at the same time as golf greats — Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomerie, Ernie Els, Rory McIlroy, and grown up under the shadow of Seve Ballesteros — Sergio Garcia has built an admirable, Hall-of-Fame worthy career.

It’s time to give him his due. Sergio, who was initially known as El Nino, which means little boy in Spanish, quickly found himself going up against some significant men in the game. In the last 21 years, he has had to scratch out his victories, often going up against fields where legends played. And he’s succeeded more than most, winning 36 professional tournaments.

From his debut in the U.S. at the 1999 Masters, great things have been expected of him. So much so that at the conclusion of that year’s PGA Championship, where he finished second to Tiger Woods, he was surrounded by writers on the media center veranda who had to wait while Garcia took a call from the King. Not Arnold Palmer. The King of Spain. That’s a lot of expectation.

As talented as Garcia has been, and as hard as he has worked on his game, the thought of being the next Seve had to take a toll over time. Perhaps that has been part of the frustration he’s had with his game and with his putting.

He has battled a variety of golf demons, from putting to gripping, but at Sanderson Farms, he proved once again that, even at age 40, he’s a winner.

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Amazingly, Garcia has been putting with his eyes closed for the last four years. Watching it can make you want to run out of the room. That’s a lot of angst. This week, though, he was confident.

“My mind was very clear throughout the whole week,” he said after the Sanderson Farms victory. “I knew what I wanted to do pretty much every single shot I hit.”

Garcia has won on every continent where golf is played. It’s ridiculous, really. His passport has probably been reissued several times for running out of stamping pages.

After winning the European Amateur and the R&A’s Amateur Championship, he won three professional victories before turning pro in 1999. He now has 11 victories on the PGA Tour. He has 15 on the European Tour, six on the Asian tour, three on the South African Tour and one each on the Japan Tour and Australian Tour. He won the Sir Henry Cotton award for rookie of the year in Europe in 1999 and the European Tour Golfer of The Year in 2017 for his Masters victory. He won the PGA of America Vardon Trophy and the PGA Tour Byron Nelson Award, both for low scoring average and both in 2008.

For much of his career, Garcia has played as a member of both the European Tour and the PGA Tour so as not to lose the opportunity to play Ryder Cup for Europe where he has been much loved by his teammates. There, he, like Ian Poulter, seems to find another golf gear that propels him to hit great shots and sink amazing chips and putts. It’s really annoying if you’re on the U.S. team or a U.S. fan and really great if you are cheering for Europe.

Surprisingly, for a man who has had legendary issues with the putter, he won the Masters. Unsurprisingly, for a renowned ball-striker, he won The Players. And what many do not know is he’s won more Ryder Cup points in his nine appearances than any other golfer on either side of the Atlantic. Ever. More than Faldo. More than Montgomerie. More than Ballesteros. More than Langer. More than Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson or the U.S. point-leader, Billy Casper.

So, let’s give Sergio Garcia his due. But let’s not ask him for a putting lesson!

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