by Shane Ryan
By the 17th, still facing a one-shot deficit, Johnson bombed a drive down the long par 4 and stuck a wedge to six feet. He made birdie to tie Allenby, and had so much adrenaline pumping—“I was so jacked up”—that he hit what he thinks may have been the farthest drive of his life on the par-5 18th. He flew the green on the approach, but an excellent chip left him an eight-footer for birdie. Allenby missed from twelve feet, and Johnson sank the putt to win his first career PGA Tour event.
From there, he never looked back, winning at Pebble Beach the next season and starting his long streak of finishing inside the FedEx Cup top fifteen. At the 2010 U.S. Open, he led Graeme McDowell by three shots on the final day. With the pressure mounting, he rushed everything. Every shot, every putt, and even the way he walked between holes, was fast. Fast is not Johnson’s style, and he ended up shooting 82 as McDowell won the tournament.
In August, he used that experience to slow himself down at the PGA Championship, where he entered the final hole on Sunday with a one-shot lead before he infamously grounded his club, took a penalty, and lost his chance to at least make a playoff.
—
“You know, if I had to do it all over again, I’d probably hit a 3-wood off the last tee instead of driver,” he said of the 18th hole. “I was hitting it easy and kinda just dinked it off the heel, and it was windy so it sliced up on the hill and down the right.”
As far as he knew, it wasn’t a backbreaker. He hit out of the slightly sandy trampled-down area that had been covered a moment before by gallery—surely the first time the fans were ever allowed to watch the event from a “bunker”—got on the green, and gave himself a medium-length par putt to win the tournament.
He missed, which is lucky for the PGA of America, since he would have begun celebrating his first major championship. Instead, he swallowed his disappointment, made bogey, and prepared for a playoff. It wasn’t until he showed up at the scoring trailer that the officials told him what had happened.
“I was mad for about thirty minutes,” he told me. “At the end of the day, it’s just a game, I earn a good living doing it, so I mean, what is there to get really mad about?”
With most players I’d scoff at this notion, but with Johnson, I think I believe it. He has a strange ability to shake off the unfortunate events of his life, which I saw firsthand when I asked him about the shooting incident, and how it had changed his life.
“Shit, I don’t know,” he said. He seemed genuinely fascinated to remember an event that, for most people, would be impossible to forget. “I haven’t really thought about it in a long time. It was more just about hanging out with the wrong people. Everybody makes mistakes and, you know, I’ve made a lot of them, but I’ve always been really good about learning from them and not doing them again.”
On that point, many people would beg to differ. There’s a quote in Moriarty’s story from a South Carolina judge who bought into that redemption angle. “Of all those people that I’ve sentenced, I think he’s a shining example of what can be done,” the judge said. “Honestly, this is a great story, how he’s turned his life around.”
That story was published in February 2009. We now know that Johnson failed a drug test later that year, and was also arrested for DUI. Video emerged from the arrest, and Johnson can be seen stumbling in the dark as he tries to walk a narrow line in front of a cop with a flashlight. The two failed tests for cocaine use followed, along with two suspensions (or quasi-suspensions, to play semantics). If nothing else, Johnson is a shining example of why we should always be cautious before proclaiming a person cured of his rocky beginnings.
“The past is never dead,” wrote William Faulkner. “It’s not even past.” That wisdom applies to many golfers, not just Johnson, but he in particular seems to have difficulty escaping his own nature.
As far as his future, there will be skeptics, and there will also be those who gravitate toward the latest iteration of his redemption song. All we really know is that there’s a murky cloud around Johnson, and it’s impossible to predict how his story will play out over the next decade. His agents, the PGA Tour, and Johnson himself have created a dissembling fog, and for now, we can only guess at the future of a man trying not to drown in the curse of his own potential.
20
AKRON, OHIO
What Do You Do with a Problem Called Sergio?; Jason Dufner Chucks His Putter; Rory-Sergio II: The Bridgestone Duel
“This isn’t the same Sergio who considered quitting the game or shook his angry fist at the golf gods. He’s content with himself, content with his life and, as a happy by-product, content with his golf game…You haven’t needed to listen to his words lately to understand that. That happiness has been written all over his face lately, his buoyant smile flashing brighter than it has in years.”
—JASON SOBEL, GolfChannel.com
On Friday, as if determined to prove that his newfound peace could produce tangible results on the course, Sergio caught fire on the greens at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, needing just one putt on eleven straight holes, birdieing his last seven, and tying a Firestone Country Club course record with a 61. It was a virtuoso performance, and the kind that proved he could play on the same footing with the best in the world.
He followed it up with a 67 on Saturday, and his cumulative -14 meant that he would take a three-shot lead into the final round. And while winning a World Golf Championship isn’t quite like winning a major, with seventy-six of the world’s best players assembled, it was the next best thing. Sergio’s game had never been better, and he did seem legitimately more content. That week, rumors persisted that he’d recently proposed to his girlfriend, Katharina Boehm, and one outlet reported that she confirmed the engagement. Happy at home and happy at golf, he had the chance to win a big event and erase some of the bad memories reaching back through the years.
There were two problems. First, he was only three-for-eleven at closing out fifty-four-hole leads in his career. The second was even more troubling—the man giving chase, who would be playing alongside him on Sunday, was Rory McIlroy. And Rory McIlroy, if he won, would supplant Adam Scott as the number 1 player in the world.
* * *
“I am the way I am. And for good and for worse, what you see is what you get. So the same way that my personality helps me a lot, sometimes it hurts me.”
—SERGIO GARCIA
At the Players Championship, a friend with the PGA Tour tipped me off that Sergio Garcia was making a brief appearance at a clinic for kids on the other side of the course, near the sponsors’ tents. Show up, he said, and maybe you can get some one-on-one time.
So I showed up, and there he was, in his scruffy glory: dressed head-to-toe in black, joking around with the kids, and offering a few tips. When he finished, and his agents corralled him for the drive back to the locker room, my Tour confederate contrived to get me a seat on the back of his four-seater cart, relegating his pretty German girlfriend to an auxiliary ride.
As it turned out, these few minutes would be the only private moments I’d share with Sergio, a character who struck me then—and does now—as both very complex and very simple, but never anywhere in between.
On that brief ride, I tried to make small talk. What’s more fun, I asked, a clinic for kids or a press conference? A clinic for kids. Is it hot on a day like this, wearing all black? Yes, a little. An awkward silence descended on us then—I wanted to ask him the big questions, but as he checked his phone and gave off a vague air of distraction, the moment didn’t seem right.
But it had to be, didn’t it? So, as the people along our path screamed out his name as we motored by, and he nodded back, I wondered aloud if his celebrity ever became a burden.
“I never looked at it like that,” he said. “It’s wonderful to be great at golf, and I’m happy for that, but in the end I’m the same as you or anyone else.”
A safe answer, and a banal one.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said, “but wheth
er the constant attention—
“But that’s what I mean,” he interrupted. “Look, if I said I couldn’t go to a restaurant because the people will know me or bother me, I’m putting myself above them. And if you stay away from people because you’re afraid of that, or you don’t act natural, they’ll just be worse when they see you, because you’ve kept yourself hidden from them. If you’re around, and they know you, it makes it easier on you. If you stay apart all the time, it separates you from them and will make your life more difficult.”
So, I thought, Sergio has surprised me. Again.
But I couldn’t delude myself—Sergio’s honesty had not always served him well, because his honesty is an emotional kind, predicated on visceral reactions to his feelings of the moment.
As he has often remarked, he’s invariably true to himself. The only problem is that Sergio’s self varies rapidly from day to day, as it does for anyone who is governed more by emotion than cold logic. In reacting, they forget the more stable truths that govern their lives—that there are times when it’s best to stifle certain impulses and stay quiet. When they lose control, the result can haunt them long after cooler heads prevail.
Sergio never learned to be quiet, and the thoughts he verbalizes under pressure don’t always represent his inner beliefs—they only stand for a fleeting emotion. The words live on nevertheless, chiseled into the permanent record, a standard by which he can forever be judged.
Unfortunately for Sergio, he plays like he thinks. In a game that rewards patience and an even disposition, he fluctuates rapidly between emotional extremes, capable of great brilliance and, inevitably, huge letdowns. Unlike his countryman José Maria Olazabal, he can’t flip a switch and become durable when victory is close at hand, and unlike Seve Ballesteros, he can’t channel his passion into a great weapon under pressure. Instead, he’s subject to its caprice—a prisoner, rather than a master, of his own mind.
It’s been like that since the beginning. The way Sergio conducts himself under stress, both on and off the course, has overshadowed the true, thoughtful self that he embodies in quieter times.
Our Sergio—the one for public consumption—is an idiot savant, and you can always count on him to play the fool.
—
The career of Sergio Garcia is inextricable from that of Tiger Woods; it has been since the moment he burst onto the scene in 1999, during the final round of the PGA Championship. Garcia, then just nineteen and in his first year as a professional, had boldly engaged Tiger Woods in a dramatic back nine duel at Medinah, and was in position to pull off a stunning upset. At one point, after sinking a birdie on the 13th, he stared pointedly at Tiger in the group behind—a ballsy challenge to the best player in the world.
By the 16th hole, Sergio trailed by just a shot, but he ran into trouble off the tee when his ball settled against the base of a red oak tree, with barely enough space to even consider, much less execute, a swing. Rather than lay up, he took a crack with his 6-iron, flailing wildly as he twisted his head. He somehow made a clean strike, and as the ball flew up the fairway, Sergio gave chase, sprinting up the hill for a better view as it rolled onto the green. The gallery erupted, and Sergio patted his heart with a wry smile as he reveled in the cheers.
It was the same boyish enthusiasm that earned him the nickname “El Niño,” and he held the crowd in his back pocket. Tiger held on to win the tournament by a stroke, but it didn’t seem to matter—finally, a true rival for golf’s superstar had emerged.
There may have been warning signs that the young Spaniard was erratic—he had sobbed in his mother’s arms after missing the cut at the British Open in ’99, and snapped at reporters who brought it up at Medinah—but those could be explained as growing pains. His courage that Sunday proved that greatness lay in his future.
To be fair, the man has had his moments. He’s won eight times on the PGA Tour, including the 2008 Players Championship, and eleven times in Europe. He’s been a solid force in the Ryder Cup, amassing an 18-9-5 record, and he almost never loses in the pairs sessions. Aside from a few dips, he’s spent the better part of the last fifteen years in the top twenty of the World Golf Rankings, and he’s climbed as high as number 2. By those measures, he belongs in any discussion of the very best golfers of his generation.
Then why, when we think of Sergio, do our minds summon images of disappointment, and emotional letdown, and public humiliation? Why has the goodwill from Medinah vanished entirely, and why is he now the butt of a thousand jokes? When did the crowds stop loving him, and when did his great promise fade?
Again, we turn to Tiger. In 2000, a day after he’d won the WGC-NEC Invitational in dominant fashion, he met Sergio in the “Battle of Bighorn.” Unless you’re a very obsessive golf fan, you’ve probably never heard of this event, and with good reason—it was a glorified TV spectacle, treated derisively by almost everybody connected to the game, and played under the umbrella of ABC’s short-lived “Monday Night Golf.” Tiger came in suffering from flulike symptoms, and gave the impression that he’d rather be anywhere else.
Sergio, on the other hand, was spoiling for a fight. Twenty years old at the time, the Spaniard caught fire on the back nine and became animated over the final holes. When he won the match, 1-up, he “celebrated as if he had won the California lottery,” to quote SI’s Michael Bamberger. It was a bizarre reaction under the circumstances, and it rubbed his opponent the wrong way.
Not that Tiger was about to complain—he had his own way of settling the score.
—
Sergio had challenged the greatest golfer in the world, and now he faced the difficult task of backing it up in tournaments that actually counted. In Tiger’s pathologically competitive prime, though, nobody could stand up to him—not Phil Mickelson, not David Duval, and certainly not Sergio Garcia. Without knowing it, the young star carved a target on his own back that day, and it was a target that Tiger never missed. In the seven times they’ve been grouped together on a weekend since that fateful night, Tiger has shot the better round all seven times. Even more remarkably, he’s won all seven tournaments.
A player like Woods has a little Michael Jordan in him. He loves—maybe even needs—an enemy, and the sight of Sergio challenging him with that impish smile at Medinah, and pumping his fist after a meaningless win at Bighorn, gave him a rival to crush. And crush him he did, with relish.
* * *
Then there was the 2006 Open Championship at Hoylake, when Tiger went out in the final group along with Sergio, who was dressed all in yellow. Tiger won and reportedly texted friends: “I just bludgeoned Tweety Bird.”
—Golf.com, 2013
Even without Tiger, Sergio struggled under pressure. The second-place finish at the PGA in ’99 was the first of 19 top-ten finishes at major championships in the next fifteen years. He won zero of those tournaments, and even though he excelled in Ryder Cup pairs, his singles record is a less impressive 3-4. Left to his own devices on the game’s biggest stages, Sergio plays like a man who can’t trust himself.
Some of the losses were more dramatic than others. At the 2007 British Open, he came into Sunday leading Steve Stricker by three shots, and everyone else by six. The collapse that day was slow and agonizing, and on the 18th hole, Sergio still had an eight-foot par putt to win the Claret Jug. He missed, and after he lost in a four-hole playoff to Padraig Harrington, he suggested that the dark forces of fate were aligned against him.
“I’m playing against a lot of guys out there,” he said. “More than the field.”
At the PGA Championship in 2008, he held a Sunday lead as late as the 16th hole before dumping his approach in the water and allowing Harrington to catch him yet again.
More often, the nerves sabotaged him well before the closing holes. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in the air when Sergio gets close at a major; a sort of anxiety that reflects the energy he emits. There are jitters in the way he moves, and acts, and at these moments, trouble seems to lurk around every co
rner. Subconsciously, he’s looking for a way to screw things up so he can escape the awful strain. After the collapse, he’ll just shrug—perhaps believing in his heart that he’s merely been unlucky again—and either complain about his bad fortune, or pretend that he’s not in pain.
The saddest of these moments came at the 2012 Masters, when a poor third round took him out of contention, and he moaned to Spanish reporters that he would forever have to settle for second-best. “I’m not good enough,” he said. “I don’t have the thing I need to have.” It was almost worse the next year at Augusta, after an opening round 66 gave him an early lead, when he bleakly remarked, “Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.” Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, it didn’t.
That was only the latest in a series of self-pitying reactions from Garcia, who had proved that he could play the martyr with the best of them. His defeatist attitude manifested itself in strange decisions, like the time he climbed a tree to play a shot from the branches at Bay Hill, only to hurt his shoulder on the swing and his hamstring on the jump down, forcing him to withdraw later in the round. At majors, he’ll take enormous risks, but not with Phil Mickelson’s wild idealism; instead, it seems as though he’s yielding to an impulse that he knows is destructive, but ties in closely with his poisonous pessimism—“I might as well go for it, because I’m going to lose anyway.”
That attitude plays directly into Sergio’s penchant for quixotic choices, which always seem to strike when the stakes are highest. In the heat of battle, it’s impossible for him to behave with any normalcy, which can result in brilliant episodes like the shot at Medinah, or, more often, total meltdowns. I think I understand Sergio’s critical problem—his attitude is poorly suited to golf, which punishes failure far more than it rewards success. In this sport, a transcendent moment might gain you a stroke, but a bad mistake can ruin your entire tournament. A risk that ends badly will undermine three or four successes and sabotage hours of hard work.