When it comes to major championships, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els are fully paid-up members of the “been there, done it,” club; the most Sergio Garcia can say is that he is at the top of the waiting list.
Yet it is the Spaniard who will tee off today as just about every pundit’s favorite to extract maximum advantage from the fact that the field for the 137th Open Championship will be missing a certain Eldrick Tiger Woods.
While the world No. 1 nurses his wounds following season-ending knee surgery, Garcia will be striding the Royal Birkdale links in pursuit of the victory he needs to heal the scars left over from his last two Open experiences.
PHOTO: AP
In 2006 at Hoylake, the Spaniard was in the final pairing with Woods on the Sunday, but was unable to live with the American’s relentless rhythm, eventually fading to a closing 73 that left him in fifth place.
Last year, at Carnoustie, he led for the first three rounds and had a 10 foot putt on the 72nd green to win the tournament.
The ball lipped out and it was Padraig Harrington, who had started the day six shots behind Garcia, who emerged victorious from the resulting play-off.
Garcia’s initial response to that setback was far from mature, his final press conference dominated by an ungracious litany of complaints about his ill-treatment at the hands of both the golfing gods and the greenkeepers he accused of taking too long to rake a bunker during the play-off.
To his credit, however, he has since had the self-awareness to take action to address the flaws in his game that contributed to his downfall, most notably his putting.
Having claimed the biggest win of his career at the Players Championship in May, Garcia rubbishes the suggestion that his Hoylake and Carnoustie experiences will come back to haunt him if he gets back into a winning position this weekend.
“It’s really not a big deal,” Garcia said when asked to reflect on the legacy of last year. “There are a lot worse things than losing an Open in a playoff. There were a lot more positives coming out of that week than negatives.”
Garcia’s work on his putting stroke with famed coach Stan Utley paid off at the Players Championship, a tournament referred to in some quarters as a fifth major.
And his improvement on the greens has not gone unnoticed among his peers.
“Sergio’s putting has come a very long way,” Els said.
“He has always been a very good ball striker and he obviously loves links conditions, so I would really rate him this week.”
With Harrington’s prospects of a successful defense of his title clouded by a wrist injury that has curtailed his practice this week, former European No. 1 Lee Westwood has the look of someone who could wreck Garcia’s dream of completing an unforgettable sporting summer for Spain in the wake of the country’s Euro 2008 triumph and Rafael Nadal’s heroics at Wimbledon.
Westwood missed out on a place in last month’s US Open play-off by a shot and has come into the tournament declaring himself as confident as he ever been going into a major.
The Englishman acknowledges however that he will need to find a different gear on the greens if he is to justify that optimism.
“I need to putt more consistently,” said the 35-year-old, who has six top five finishes but has yet to win this year. “If I can do that, I’m confident I’ll be there or thereabouts.”
Mickelson, too, has been talking a good game in the build-up to the tournament.
However, with only one top 10 finish in 15 previous attempts at winning the world’s oldest major, the left-hander knows he will have to prove a lot of people wrong if he is to add a Tiger-free Open title to the two US Masters and one US PGA titles he has won with Woods in the field.
Since Mark O’Meara won the last Open here 10 years ago, the Birkdale layout has been lengthened by around 100 yards and most of the fairways have been narrowed.
With wetter conditions ensuring the rough is distinctly thicker than is usual for an Open, the locker room consensus appears to be that solid driving will be one of the keys to victory.
Els believes that, with both fairways and greens holding well, the course will play relatively easily with the result that up to 40 of the 132-strong field will entertain serious hopes of winning in the absence of Woods.
Despite an up and down year to date, the South African likes his chances of adding to his 2002 victory at Muirfield, confessing with a grin that the absence of Woods for the first time in 46 majors — 14 of which the US player won — has not left him “overly disappointed.”
His rivals might not say it with such candor, but they will all be thinking it.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but