Sebas García arrives at the HotelPlanner Tour Final with the smile of someone who knows they have already succeeded. Not just because of the trophy he lifted two weeks ago at the Hangzhou Open, his first international victory, but because that week in China changed his destiny. The DP World Tour 2026 card is already secured. Mission accomplished. Now, at the Road to Mallorca Final, the Madrid native plays without pressure, with a light mind and a steady pulse. “I’ve won once, why not twice?” he says with a laugh. And he doesn’t say it lightly. He is seventh and still has a chance to win the Order of Merit. He needs to win and, to start with, JC Ritchie must finish outside the top ten, the feat is very complex, but so was winning and he has achieved it. Since Álvaro Velasco in 2010, no Spaniard has won the then-called Challenge Tour.
For the first time in his career, Sebas arrives at a tournament with the backing of having won abroad and the conviction that his golf is where he always wanted it to be. He does so after a long season, one of those that seem never-ending, but sometimes give back what the effort deserves when you least expect it. He has played a lot, but today he feels at peace. His game flows and his gaze conveys calm.
It hasn’t always been this way. The year, in fact, looked rather grey. He had a promising second place in Abu Dhabi, a few weeks after incorporating Miguel Fajardo into his technical team, but it was a small oasis in the desert, the schedule became entangled. Between January and September, Sebas missed 17 cuts. A burden too heavy for someone aspiring to one of the twenty passports to the DP World Tour. He couldn’t quite put together a whole week. The game was there, the sensations weren’t bad, but something wasn’t quite fitting.
The change began in Poland. Not overnight, but with a decision that would end up transforming his season: the arrival of Edo Meléndez. The team decided to contact the Chilean caddie to accompany Sebas in the final stretch of the year. Until then, several colleagues had been rotating in the bag, but Edo’s stability and experience were felt from the first tournament. It was a personal and economic gamble, but the result has been unbeatable.
Meléndez is not a newcomer. He has an extensive track record and a résumé that commands respect. He has worked with Abraham Ancer, Gonzalo Fernández Castaño, and Alejandro Cañizares, among others. He knows what a circuit is, what a Sunday with everything at stake is, and what a player needs when the wind is against them. His arrival brought structure, calm, and, above all, a reading of the course that Sebas needed.
Sebas is an expressive person, who talks a lot, and Edo has a calmness that is contagious. The proof is in the pudding and the numbers don’t lie: since they’ve been together, five tournaments, five cuts made. Three top fives and a victory. A full house. Sebas hadn’t made more than two consecutive cuts all year.
This complicity between player and caddie is noticeable at first glance. Sebas, more emotional, always seeks rhythm; Edo, more analytical, brings order and pause. One provides momentum, the other balance. And from this combination, a spectacular end of the season has emerged.
But not all the credit is in the bag. There has also been a profound change in technical work. In parallel with Meléndez’s arrival, Sebas began training with Jacobo Pastor, and there he found answers to a problem that had been haunting him for months: the putt.
For much of the year, Sebas struggled with the uncomfortable feeling of “pulling” the ball, closing the right shoulder too much and bringing the arm inwards. The stroke wasn’t coming out clean. Pastor identified the gesture, corrected the position, and little by little the Madrid native regained confidence on the greens. “It was a minimal detail, but it was taking me out of the tournament time and again,” he explains. “Now I feel like I’m pushing better, that the movement is more natural. That changes your mindset.”
The combined effect —an experienced caddie, a coach fine-tuning details, and a player who believes in his game again— has done the rest. In just a month and a half, Sebas has gone from looking at the leaderboard with concern to doing so with a smile. From fighting to survive the cuts to lifting trophies and securing a place in the European elite.
The Madrid native knows that golf gives nothing away, but also that when a door opens, you have to cross it without looking back. “The only thing I ask God is to keep me as I am. If I’m healthy, I know I can maintain playing rights on the DP World Tour,” he says with that mix of faith and simplicity that characterises him.
Mallorca will be, in a way, his last stop before starting the return to the elite. Without pressure, with full confidence, and with the certainty of having done his homework. He has closed the circle of a season that started off-kilter and ends like a fairy tale. With calm, with faith, and with a Chilean by his side who seems to have found the right key.
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