Well, he didn’t do it with a belly putter, but Sergio Garcia fulfilled my prediction after last year’s British Open that it was just a matter of time before he won a big-time tournament.
On Sunday afternoon, the 28 year-old Garcia won The Players in a one-hole playoff against journeyman Paul Goydos (169th in the World Golf Rankings) as he shook off — for the most part, at least — the putting woes that have bedeviled the former prodigy over the past several years. The victory is Garcia’s first on the PGA Tour since 2005 and easily the most important championship in his career to date, reflected by the fact that his World Golf Ranking went from 18th to 10th with the win. For the record, Garcia burst on the scene as a 19 year-old when he went toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods before taking second place at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah. Few who saw him play in that tournament would have predicted at the time that it would take him nine years to win a tournament of the The Players’ stature.
By the way, fourth-place finisher Briny Baird summed up as well as anybody the final day of The Players, which saw contenders such as Phil Mickelson (78) and Kenny Perry (81) flame out: "I don’t care who wins the tournament," Baird said. "The wind won. It kicked everybody’s butts."
Although Garcia’s unexpected victory and Goydos’ stirring play were compelling story lines, the big winner this week was the tournament itself, which provided a much more entertaining product than the Masters for the second straight year. Dean Barnett notes the main reason why:
Particularly when paired against the Masters, The Players shows some strength. The field of competitors is stronger at The Players; indeed, it’s the strongest field in golf on an annual basis.
The Masters’ history also has to give The Players some encouragement. The Masters is a relatively new tournament, ostentatiously and boldly designed to achieve major status some 70 years ago. And the plan worked. The Players has the same sort of dynamic, plus the additional benefit that the venue and the tournament belong to the PGA Tour. In other words, The Players truly is the players’ tournament. In a manner of speaking, they own it.
Where The Players actually belongs to the players, the Masters and Augusta National belong to a bunch of weird guys who are prone to despotism. Additionally, the Masters has looked a bit long in the tooth in recent years. In a misguided effort to modernize the course, Augusta National unleashed a supremely mediocre architect to modify one of the best and most original golf designs ever.
The changes to the course have been horrendous on a number of levels. The most damaging has been the fact that the changes sucked the drama out of the tournament in the name of “defending par.” Augusta is now so long and difficult, there are few birdie opportunities and the players take over five hours to make their way around the course in twosomes. If the lords of Augusta National were capable of embarrassment (which they almost surely are not), this last fact would shame them no end. The course is now harder (and more boring), but is it a better and fairer test of golf? Does it effectively identify the world’s best golfers? Leader boards the last couple of years populated almost exclusively by no-names and an angry Tiger Woods suggest otherwise.
Meanwhile, The Players takes place at the Tournament Players Club (TPC), a course that is also very difficult, but still manages to identify the best golfers and be fun. The trademark short 17th hole with its island green is pure fun and excitement. (Journalistic integrity compels me to confess to playing the Tournament Players Club this winter and effortlessly parring the 17th by hitting a nice easy nine iron to the center to the green. I’m not sure why the pros have so much trouble with the hole. Maybe it has something to do with having hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.)
Although a beautiful venue, Augusta National is currently so long and difficult that it provides a disincentive for the players to take risks, similar to the type of golf that has long been played in the usually boring U.S. Open. The Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, on the other hand, is much shorter than Augusta National and most U.S. Open venues, and the course continues to encourage creative risk-taking. A course that encourages risk-taking will usually produce a more entertaining tournament than one that does not.