Sergio Garcia
Sergio Garcia sounded, well, almost young again, after he won the Castello Masters in Valencia, Spain, last Sunday by 11 - count 'em, 11 - shots. Garcia had seemed like an old 31 in the three years since his last win before this Masters - not the Masters he covets, but a win nonetheless. That was the HSBC Champions in November 2008, when he reached the No. 2 ranking in the world.
It wasn't long before the massively gifted Spaniard went into a funk. He rarely looked happy on the course, and there were many times he really didn't belong out there. There was heartache over a broken relationship with Morgan-Leigh Norman, Greg Norman's daughter. She dumped Garcia in March of 2009, and he acknowledged that it was difficult to cope with the breakup. He said he wasn't happy on the course, so it was only natural that he couldn't play winning golf.
Garcia didn't even make the 2010 Ryder Cup team. He'd been a superstar in every Ryder Cup before, going 14-6-4 in five Ryder Cups before that - five in a row. The Ryder Cup didn't seem the same without Garcia, who always got fired up for the matches. There were questions as to why a golfer of such gifts couldn't raise his game and win a major, not that he hadn't come close in the biggest championships. But there weren't any questions about him in Ryder Cups.
Time helped Garcia heal the wounds from the breakup with Norman's daughter, and he started to find some joy on the course this year, especially after the Masters, where he tied for 35th. Garcia finished tied for seventh at the U.S. Open last June. He lost on the fifth hole of a playoff in the BMW International Open later that month to fellow Spaniard Pablo Larrazabal. He tied for ninth at the Open Championship in July, and for 12th at the PGA Championship the next month. He was finding his form. He was finding some fun on the course. He wasn't all the way back, and there was still something of world-weariness about him, but he was progressing.
Garcia, a feel player, runs on emotion. He wisely took four weeks off before playing the Castello Masters in front of a home crowd, and then shot 67-63-64-63 to win by those 11 shots. It was some performance, and should go a long way to helping Garcia feel he'll challenge again regularly in tournaments, and win regularly. His talent has always suggested he should win frequently. His talent has suggested he should win majors.
The word "should," well, should be banished from golf discussions.
"They [the weeks off]were mother's milk for me - obviously they worked," Garcia said after he won in Valencia. "It's hard to say that you expect to fire like I did, but I was feeling good and I've been improving all year."
Maybe Garcia will continue to improve. Maybe he'll win his first major next year. Maybe.
At least one can say "maybe." It wasn't possible to say that not that long ago, when Garcia was lost, and when one had to wonder if he would find his game again.
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein