DORAL, Fla. — There is no denying the beauty, the aura, the history. Sergio Garcia gets all that. He’s soaked it up much as he can in his 25 years of visiting Augusta National. And as he heads into his 100th major championship, he prefers to enjoy it rather than fight it.
Garcia, 45, has endured his moments of frustration at the home of the Masters, but found a way to put it all aside and win his only major title when he defeated Justin Rose in a playoff in 2017.
That was his 19th appearance in the tournament, the most of any Masters competitor to win in his first attempt.
As he readies to play there again next week, Garcia suggests he is at peace, even if words just last year suggest there was still some lingering angst.
“I think at the end of the day, it’s to go there and enjoy the week as much as possible,” Garcia said at Doral in advance of the LIV Golf Miami event that begins Friday. “I think that sometimes we’re competitors and we want to go there and do really well, but sometimes you can get too much in your head, and obviously I had my issues with Augusta when it comes down to where I’d just get frustrated and maybe feel like I don’t get what I deserve or something like that.”
That is probably putting it nicely. Garcia has had numerous issues over the years, once saying “I don’t have the thing I need to have.”
Garcia first played the tournament as the reigning British Amateur champion in 1999, paired with Tiger Woods for the first two rounds. He had spoken to Spanish compatriots Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal, who obviously raved about the place.
And it was also Garcia’s good fortune to be low amateur in 1999 when Olazabal won for the second time, which meant getting to share a Butler cabin moment for the green jacket ceremony.
But as the years wore on, Garcia’s frustration grew. He had just a single top-5—in 2004—through his first 18 appearances.
And after that 2004 finish, he had a stretch of 18 Masters rounds between 2005 and 2010 where he broke par just twice and missed three cuts.
“Unfortunately it’s easy to think of the negative things on this course,” he said.
In 2012, Garcia was in third place before a third-round 75 knocked him out of contention. He spoke in English afterward to reporters, and said little of consequence, but unloaded when speaking with Spanish-speaking media.
“I’m not good enough,” he said in a translated interview. “I don’t have the thing I need to have. In 13 years I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to play for second or third place.”
Asked if he was referring to the Masters, he said: “In any major.”
“I had my chances and opportunities and I wasted them,” he said. “I have no more options. I wasted my options.”
A day later, when asked about his remarks, Garcia said; “Do you think I lie when I talk?” he said. “Everything I say, I say it because I feel it. If I didn’t mean it, I couldn’t stand here and lie like a lot of the guys. If I felt like I could win, I would do it.”
What did he think he was missing? “Everything,” he said.
That cleansing helped Garcia turn things around. A year later he shot a first-round 66 and finished tied for eighth. And his relationship with the course began to soften.
Garcia shared the second- and third-round leads at the Masters in 2017 and with a final-round 69 tied Rose before beating him in a playoff.
Phil Mickelson, who won the Masters three times, was part of the news conference at Doral with Garcia and gave his assessment of how the Spanish golfer handled that victory.
“From a guy outside looking in, and I’m not Sergio, but it looked like the year he won you managed your emotions when you had a bad break or two much better and didn’t let it get to you,” Mickelson said. “You’ve always had the game. You'’ve always had the talent. You’ve always driven it so well. You’ve always been such an incredible ball striker. Augusta is a great course for you, and it seemed like when you had a few bad breaks or whatever reason you were just in this calm state of mind where it didn’t affect you, and I thought that was an interesting thing as players to take away, to learn from.”
Mickelson went through similar issues trying to win the first of his six majors. He was a pro for 12 years and competing in his 12th Masters before winning in 2004.
“For me personally, it was something very similar,” he said. “It was the (par-5) 15th hole is a hole that I would press. I would force the issue. I lost the tournament a number of times on 15 before I ended up winning it, and when I finally did win it in ’04, I felt like, all right, a 5 is O.K. there. Like I could lose the tournament on 15; I don’t need to make 4 every time. So I would always press the issue, and I’d make 6, 7 a number of times trying to make a 4, and when I finally accepted a 5 on that hole and tried to win it elsewhere, that’s when I seemed to finally break through. In fact, in ’04 I shot 31 on the back nine to win by one, and I did not birdie 15, I made a par.
“That was the hole that I felt like being more patient and taking a different strategy and not pushing the issue allowed me to ultimately take advantage of the other holes to win.”
Garcia has made just a single cut at the Masters since winning eight years ago and he missed the 2020 Masters due to COVID-19—the first time he missed a major as a pro since 2019.
Last year, he again expressed frustration at Augusta, more likely to do with questions he was getting about LIV Golf than his game.
That has come around nicely of late as he won a LIV Golf event in Hong Kong and contended at the International Series event in Macau before finishing fourth.
With a Masters invite due to his win and another that is coming from the PGA Championship, he still has hopes of qualifying for both the U.S. Open and the British Open via LIV’s points list. And he’s talked openly about another chance at the Ryder Cup.
But first it’s the Masters ... and a rare 100th appearance in a major championship.
“I think that it’s important for me to go out there and enjoy the week no matter what and just do it because it’s worth it, because it’s an amazing week and it’s something that—not only for you but for your family,” he said. “You can create so many amazing memories. It just doesn’t have to be about playing well.
“It’s something that I kind of figured out a little bit last year. On Friday I kind of lost my head a little bit, and because of that it cost me missing the cut. I’m happy to say it; it was all my fault. You have to regroup, and that’s what I'm going to do, and we’ll see. We’ll see what happens next week.
“But I just want to go there and really enjoy it because it’s the way it should be.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Making His 100th Major Start at the Masters, Sergio Garcia Plans to Enjoy the Ride.