Third round of the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters. Sebastián García steps up to the tee of hole 15 at the Doha Golf Club. His round is going very well. Four under par so far. The previous day, Friday, he had just made the cut, finishing with a saving birdie on the 18th. And now he’s making a comeback.
Let’s go back to the 15th tee with the Madrid native. He hits hard with the driver, but the escape to the right is considerable. Sebas and his caddie, the Scotsman Greig Stanfield, cross their fingers. Let’s see how they find the ball. But when they get there, to that large desert island of sand, dunes and stones, everything seems to be good news. The ball is apparently well placed and they have a line to the green. Now it’s time to make the right decision, because after all they are still almost two hundred meters from the flag and they are still on sandy, treacherous terrain…
For a moment they consider the possibility of simply playing to the fairway, but the truth is that both understand that they should not have too many problems in overcoming the water hazard that defends the peninsula where the green is located. Sebas hits with confidence, but at the very moment of impact he realizes that something is not right. Just below the ball was a pebble and the ball comes out completely topped. Water. And double bogey.
At the moment of stepping up to that 15th tee on Saturday, the Spanish player had just strung together two hundred holes without making a double bogey. The last one was on hole 12 of the Majlis course at the Emirates Golf Club, during the fourth round of the Dubai Desert Classic, a few weeks ago. Therefore, we must add the six that remained in that fourth round in Dubai, plus another 72 from the week in Ras Al Khaimah, where he played all four rounds without making a single one, the same as in Bahrain (another 72 holes), and the 50 he had already played in Qatar until that fateful moment. Total, two hundred. “I’m not sure what it means for others to string together two hundred holes without making a double bogey, but for me it’s spectacular,” says Sebas almost laughing. In reality, most would sign up for this sequence, but it is true that for him, who until now has not exactly been a model of consistent player, the data is even more valuable.
To date, analyzing chronologically each and every one of the tournaments he has played on the DP World Tour, he had never even come close to such a figure. His best streak in this sense was 144 holes without a double bogey, signed in March 2021, which started precisely in Qatar and developed mainly in the two consecutive tournaments that year in Kenya. Needless to say, he had never in his career, not even close, strung together ten rounds of competitive golf without making a single double bogey, which has occurred in this series (the four in Ras Al Khaimah, the four in Bahrain and the first two in Qatar). Beyond the specific record, the important thing for the player is that the fact does not seem to respond to chance.
“There are two technical issues, very specific, that I have been working on with David Castillo and with Pepín (Rivero) and that are bearing fruit. They are two trivial things, you could say, but they are helping me a lot,” explains Sebas. “Of course, I still miss shots, but quite a few less than before and so golf becomes easier,” he adds.
The key, as is often the case in these cases, is the virtuous circle that is created: the fact of missing less helps him to be more calm on the course, which then also translates into better decision making, which in turn helps not to chain errors, which in turn increases confidence, which in turn helps him to turn the page quickly after making a mistake, which in turn avoids those hot flashes that usually do so much damage… “Before I felt that to make a great round I had to do wonders, now there are times when I make a good result and I don’t have the feeling of having done anything special, but it comes out more naturally”.
Sebas García has completed a solid desert tour of four tournaments. To start with, he has made the cut four times in a row, a sequence that has only occurred once more in his entire career on the European circuit. It is true that so far he has not signed a great result, with the best being the twelfth place in Bahrain, but he has never stopped feeling reasonably comfortable and calm on the course. However, waiting for the ‘bell’, his numbers leave no room for doubt: he is the Spaniard who has climbed the most in the world ranking at the start of 2024, moving up nearly two hundred places (from 754 to 581), but he has also added just over 160 points in the Race to Dubai, a record that may not be brutal, but it is by far the best of his career at this stage of the season: his best year in that sense was until now the year 2020, when he only had 29.6 points at this stage, and there is no need to remember the tremendous struggles this player has had almost every year to maintain his playing rights at the end of the year. This time he already has a third of the work done in February. It’s another thing. And he knows it.
“I have returned from this tour relieved, that is the truth, even though I have not yet been able to fight for a victory. Of course I handle those numbers, I look at them, I think anyone who says they don’t look at them is lying, and I’m savoring it. Until now I started each season with the hope of winning a tournament, of course, but more thinking about that week when everything goes well, and in reality the goal was always to see if I could save the card… Now I see it in a somewhat different way. For the first time I am calmly considering the option of seeing if I can get into the Dubai Final,” he says.
His next stop will be in Kenya, next week. There he could continue stringing together holes without a double bogey, of course. His current series is 21 holes, after the slip on the 15th on Saturday in Qatar, because then he did not make any more, neither on Saturday, nor on Sunday. In March he will turn 35 and never until now had he felt that he had such a good grip on the reins of his effervescent golf. He has plenty of room to really turn his career around.
