Sergio García (+3) has made the cut at the Masters at Augusta, but his bad feelings have not changed one bit. “If I keep playing like this, the best thing would be to hang up the bag of clubs”. He doesn’t say it exactly like that, it’s not literal, but that’s what is implied by his gesture when he speaks to the Spanish media who travelled to Augusta after carding a second round of 74 strokes.
The sequence is as follows. He is asked whether he can see anything positive about making the cut despite not having his best game. First of all, he doesn’t classify it as a B, C or D game, but as “Z game”. Then, he says there are three ways to look at it. The first is positive, since it does show he’s fighting and has the grit to stay in the tournament. That’s the good part.
The less good part is that it’s inevitable to think that if his game were a little better, he could even be fighting with the best. The third is the most worrying, the darkest. “The third thought is when this bad run of play is going to end… And that leads me to worse thoughts”, he points out. Like what?, he’s asked. He responds with the symbolic gesture of grabbing the bag of clubs and putting it to one side. In other words, he’s referring to hanging up the clubs.
This is the exact conversation:
Sergio García: “You can look at it as saying, well yes, right? Well fought. The truth is that it’s quite an achievement to make the cut playing so badly or feeling so bad. But at the same time, well, you can also think, if it were a little bit better, I’d probably be there with a chance to win. And the third thing you can think is, when is this going to change? What’s worrying me the most? It’s what worries me most, because hitting the ball the way I am brings thoughts that aren’t the nicest.
Reporter: “¿What do you mean?”
Sergio García: (He makes the gesture of hanging up the bag of clubs).
Reporter: “¿Yes? Well, but you’re not close yet”.
Sergio García: “Well, we’re getting closer. We’re getting closer all the time”.
Reporter: “That’s just the heat of the moment now”.
Sergio García: “Well, the four-month heat of the moment. It’s not a one-week heat of the moment”.
Sergio’s frustration runs from head to toe to such an extent that leaving the game even crosses his mind. He says it outright. The man from Borriol has always said it’s not worth playing bad golf or, at least, not having control of what’s happening with his swing. Now he’s lost and, for the moment, hasn’t found his way back. “Of course I’m trying new things, I’m trying, but there’s no way”.
García, 46, makes clear that the thought of quitting golf is by no means a momentary flare-up. “Look, it would be a flare-up if it were a day, a week, two weeks, but not when you’ve had four months and you don’t know when it’s going to end… or if it will end”, he says.
Sergio’s big technical problem recently has to do with the driver. “I’m missing on both sides, to the left and to the right, and that’s the worst. If you miss to one side you can more or less control it, but on both… With everything, with the irons and so on, but above all with the drive. And if the drive doesn’t work in my game, my game collapses. If I don’t hit the drive well, which is what I’ve done best all my life, my whole game falls apart because it takes away all my confidence in the rest”, he clarifies.
Of course, we come back to the beginning, we’re talking about feelings. The reality is that Sergio hit nine and ten fairways in the early days of the Masters, which is no disaster. He is practically at the tournament average. But he doesn’t feel it that way. It’s very hard to play golf like this and even harder in a major. “Right now I get over the ball and hope I don’t have a fit while I’m swinging. And then pray that the ball comes out more or less straight”.
Be that as it may, with his confidence at rock bottom, the reality is that Sergio managed to make the cut with a 74 on Friday in which he made a double bogey at 17 after missing the tee shot to the left. It’s the second cut Sergio has made at Augusta since he won in 2017, that is, in his last eight appearances. The objective now is to regain confidence to finish the tournament as close to the lead as possible and, above all, to finally push away that ugly ghost he has in his head
