He hasn't won a major. That just means he hasn't won one yet. It's the only reason you can't officially call Sergio Garcia the most exciting player in the world today, even if he is. But he's going to win a major soon, maybe as soon as this year. He's going to win a major and he's going to win big for a long time, especially now that he's got a better swing than the one he showed up with in 1999 behind the tree and Tiger Woods at the PGA at Medinah.
And once Sergio does start winning the way he can and the way he will, look out. Because he will be the one who appears to be playing in living color while the other top guys, and that includes Tiger and Phil the Thrill, look as if they're playing in black and white. No pun intended.
He was the hot kid once and is about to be the hot kid all over again. He doesn't always watch his manners, on the course or off. Or watch what can be a smart mouth. He gets carried away when he's going good, as if he's the only one out there. He's as wonderfully competitive (and occasionally as chippy) at the Ryder Cup as the great Seve Ballesteros once was. But at a time when Tiger broods more than Hamlet and we all wonder how Mickelson (even after winning the Green Jacket) will come back from all those near misses in the other majors last year, when Vijay Singh is as exciting as C-Span (though he's winning every other week), here is Sergio, with everything still ahead of him. Driving fast cars and dating actresses and tennis stars and actually behaving as if he's enjoying his talent and having fun being himself—having as much fun as any golfer since Lee Trevino.
I will always root for Mickelson. I will always want to watch Tiger, even when he's not winning everything. But Sergio making a run or two at a major this year, taking aim at the boys on top, would be the best possible thing that could happen to golf. I would rather watch him than all of them. He laughs when you ask him about being called the best current player without a major, now that Mickelson has broken through. And when I say laugh, I mean Garcia really laughs. He's on the phone from Florida, where he is filming a commercial.
"Would you remind all the people who want to give me that label that I'm only twenty-four?" he says. Then right away he adds: "It's unbelievable, if you think about it. I see these stories sometimes about the young guns on the Tour, and I don't even make the list anymore. Like I got old all of a sudden." Laughs again and says, "Like I am old news.
"Guys come up to me," Garcia says, "and they go, 'Sergio, are you unhappy or worried that you haven't won a big one yet?' And I want to say to them"—his voice rising to a shout now, like he just rolled in a long one on the eighteenth green—"Maybe I'd be a little worried if I was forty years old!" The voice comes back to earth now, softly, like a pillow hitting the bed: "But I'm not. I am twenty-four. I turn twenty-five right after the first of the year. I'm going to have eighty more chances to win majors over the next twenty years. When people want to talk to me about these things, I want to tell them that I pretty much think things are going to be okay."
They are going to be more than okay. If he stays healthy, he is going to get sixty-eight more chances at majors by the time he is Vijay's age. And when Vijay was Sergio's age?He had one win of note in the books: the Malaysian PGA Championship. Sergio Garcia has five victories on the PGA Tour and nine internationally and is already, right now, more of a Ryder Cup star than anybody we have in this country. All Garcia did in 2004 was win twice on the Tour, take home more than $3 million and finish ninth on the money list. Oh, and by the way, he shot sixty-six on the last day at Augusta and finished fourth.
The fact is, the kid is finally ready to be the Next Big Thing. He's not content to be number nine in the world, he's not satisfied with what he's done since turning pro in 1999. He is still young and talented and impatient. He had an outside chance at Augusta, on Mickelson's day, but he was too far back when he began making all his birdies. He was in the last group with Tiger at Bethpage Black in 2002, the last time Tiger won a major. He felt like he was right there that day, even if the only thing anybody remembers is how often he was gripping and regripping and looking more compulsive than Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. He did it the whole tournament, including all Sunday with the world watching, to the point where the New York galleries started chanting every time he'd squeeze his grip again.
"I know by now that you don't just have to be good to win a major, you have to be a little bit lucky, too," he says. "I've seen with my own eyes how easily it can go either way, for the guy who wins and for the guy who loses." There is a long pause and then he says, "You must understand something: Nobody wants to win a major more than I do. I think I know what it takes now. I feel I am ready to take that step. I am moving up on six years as a pro, and I've had my chances, but I just haven't broken through. It hasn't been my week. And that's what it comes down to, really. I haven't had my week yet." Another pause. "But I'm going to."
