Monday, May 12, 2008
Sergio Stands Up

Sergio Garcia won his first PGA Tour title in three years after beating Paul Goydos in a play-off to claim the Players Championship at Sawgrass.

The Spaniard became just the second European to win the event, joining 1987 winner Sandy Lyle. Largely missing in action since a heartbreaking play-off loss to Padraig Harrington at last year's British Open, El Nino thoroughly deserved his seventh US PGA Tour triumph.


"The goal is to keep getting better and the only thing this tells me is to keep working hard and believe in myself," he said. "There have been times when you doubt yourself [but] when I believe in myself, there's not a lot of guys out there that can beat me", said the Iberian dreamboat.

One who can is Woods, who missed the tournament due to recent knee surgery. "I want to thank Tiger for not being here," Garcia said, only half jokingly.



Goydos's Australian caddie, Scott Saginac, did everything he could to get his man across the line but without a bond villainesque weather machine he couldn’t control the wind. At the penultimate hole of regulation, Saginac talked Goydos out of hitting a nine iron at the famous island-green par-three hole. Instead, Goydos hit a wedge to the heart of the green and made a safe par, so when they returned to the same hole for the play-off, the Californian chose the same club again.


Unfortunately this time the crosswind that had been whipping left-to-right all day gusted at exactly the wrong time. Goydos's ball, which looked so good while it was in the air, came up just short, into the water, effectively handing Garcia the tournament.


"He hit a great shot," said Saginac who’s been working for Goydos for five years. "… Paul thought it was good, Sergio thought it was good, we all thought it was good. And then it dropped in the water."

Gutted.

Meanwhile many of the players expected to make the Ryder Cup team were given plenty to think about after a dreadful first two days of The Players Championship left many prominent names taking an early flight home.

Open champion Padraig Harrington, world No 10 Justin Rose and recent Ryder Cup team-mates Lee Westwood, Paul Casey and Niclas Fasth missed the cut as tricky winds gusting up to 35mph around the Stadium Course at Sawgrass, in north Florida, caused havoc.

One of Faldo's predecessors, Bernhard Langer, showed he might still have another Ryder Cup appearance left in him by producing a round that he described as almost 'perfect'.


Congratulations Sergio. Even though we haven’t been able to find any quotes we’re pretty sure he did it for GOLFPUNK’s Shaun McGuckian. In GP 38 he and Owen Blackhurst argued if the Spaniard with the liquid swing would reach his undoubted potential. Shaun said ‘of course he will, watch this space’ and has been smugger than a mug of smog since Garcia’s winning putt.











5/12/2008 5:17:21 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #  Comments [0] 

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