Through the years with Sergio Garcia
By Bill Felber
A look back at the 2020 Sanderson Farms champion’s 11 victories
With the exceptions of Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, no player encapsulates the recent history of the PGA Tour quite so well as Sergio Garcia.
Garcia’s victory Sunday at the Sanderson Farms was his 11th Tour win since 2001. He’s also won 20 European Tour championships, among them the 2008 WGC-HSBC Champions and a pair of Andalucia Valderrama Masters (2017-18), which he hosted.
Garcia’s best season was 2008. That should be no surprise given that he was in his late 20s…basically his golfing prime. He won the Players Championship that year, a major reason why his earnings peaked at $4.93 million.
One of the most interesting aspects of Sergio’s game is that it has only evolved in order to keep up with the times, but none in any way as a concession to age or other uncontrollable factors. For instance, as a PGA Tour rookie in 2001, Sergio ranked 23rd in driving distance with an average blast of 287.8 yards. He’s now up to 305.8 yards, but he still ranks 27th on Tour.
You see the same kind of station-keeping in other quantifiable aspects of Garcia’s performance. Here are his 2001 and 2019 ranks in three other major performance categories:
Category 2001 (rank) 2019 (rank)
Greens In Regulation 67.96% (67th) 68.31% (60th)
Scrambling 60.99% (72nd) 59.36% (90th)
Putts per Round 28.66 (167th) 29.34 (144th)
That’s a reasonably consistent profile over two decades: long hitter, competent shotmaker, competent scrambler, shaky putter.
His 11th career PGA Tour win Sunday provides an appropriate occasion to look back at Garcia’s career as measured by those victories. That look will also provide a time capsule of Garcia the player.