Sergio García stood on the 73rd green of his 74th major championship needing only to hole out in two putts from 12 feet to win the 2017 Masters Tournament, to follow in Seve Ballesteros’ and Jose-Maria Olazabal’s Spanish footsteps, and to throttle the major albatross hanging around his neck for nearly two decades. And all I could think to myself was that if anyone could possibly screw this up from here, it would be Sergio García.
But no: this time, on what would have been Seve’s 60th birthday, Sergio holed his birdie putt. And so an uneven Masters week – which began with the freak injury and withdrawal of world number one Dustin Johnson, swirled through two days of high winds and low temperatures, and seemingly fizzled as the multiplayer shootout suggested by the Saturday night leaderboard failed to materialize – ended dramatically, and satisfactorily, with the best Masters finish since Adam Scott’s playoff win in 2013.
Ever since his eyes-wide-shut tree trunk escape and uphill sprint at the 1999 PGA Championship, where he finished second to Tiger Woods, Sergio’s thrilling talent and unfulfilled potential had been inseparable. Nine PGA Tour and 12 European Tour titles – including the Players Championship in 2008 – and 22 top-ten finishes in majors (four times a runner-up, 12 times in the top five) is a good career. But the near misses rankled, notably his two losses to Padraig Harrington in the 2007 Open Championship and 2008 PGA. Even worse were the not-so-near misses, the countless majors where Sergio squandered his places near the summit of weekend leaderboards. At the Ryder Cup, Sergio’s record and joyous intensity are beyond reproach, but on golf’s biggest individual stages he had become a poor man’s Greg Norman, without the solace of two Claret Jugs.
This Masters Sunday began well for Sergio – and poorly for almost everyone else. The penultimate pairing of Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth shifted gears between neutral and reverse, while nobody in the trailing pack could mount a high-speed pursuit. An afternoon I’d thought might resemble the great free-for-alls of my Masters childhood – 1986, 1987 and 1989 in particular – in which half a dozen players entered the last few holes with realistic chances of winning instead saw Sergio’s two early birdies give him a three-shot lead over Rose after five holes.
Then the familiar Sergio pattern reemerged. After Rose birdied the 6th, 7th and 8th to tie for the lead, Sergio badly pushed two shots to bogey the 10th and fall behind. A pull from the 11th tee begat another bogey, and another from the 13th tee found a bush and an unplayable lie. This was the Sergio whose highly public battles with nerves – the infinite waggles, the yippy putting strokes – had never been fully won, and Rose looked likely to lead by at least three with five holes remaining.
However, Sergio scrambled for par at 13, birdied 14, then grazed the flagstick with his second at 15 and made eagle. Conventional wisdom inflected with recency bias suggests this was one of the greatest Sundays in Masters history, and while I would contest such findings, Sergio’s rally and the thunderous blows he and Rose exchanged over the final few holes made for compulsive viewing. The old Sergio reasserted himself once more on his short birdie putt to win in regulation, after which his puzzled exasperation looked worryingly familiar. But just as Paul Goydos found water at 17 in the 2008 Players playoff, Rose found trees and pine straw at 18 in this playoff, and Sergio pushed through the open door with another majestic approach to seal victory.
Sergio's career now stands at a curious crossroads. He is three years older than Phil Mickelson was when he won his first major at the 2004 Masters; that Masters was the making of Mickelson, whose style and popularity resemble Sergio's and whose record since reaching his mid-30s – from 2004 to 2016 he averaged one top-two major finish per year – is among the best ever. But I wonder if the 2017 Masters might be the unmaking of Sergio as a golfer. By all accounts he is very happily engaged to be married, he seems at peace with himself, and he might – might – choose to view this triumph as validation rather than inspiration. I hope not: Sergio is box office, one of the few professional golfers who wears a distinct personality on his sleeve and makes every tournament in which he contends instantly watchable. I don't always root for him, but like Seve himself, deep down I'm always glad when he's around for me to love or hate. Let's hope Sergio García's major championship aspirations remain as big as his heart was during this memorable Masters.