Day 2 of the Reign From Spain, and it's time for some longer-form pieces to appear... Shack is in savor mode, mostly so he doesn't yet have to contemplate Erin Hills...
Here's Geoff's mini-take:
A day later, the magnitude of Sergio's playoff win may not have sunk in.
--He finally has his first major after a historic number of opportunities.
--His play on the two back nine par-5s will join the highlight reels of best Masters moments.
--A lifelong drawer of the ball, Garcia won hitting a fade on a course that some feel strongly favors a right-to-left shot shape.
First of all, it's "an" historic number....Thanks, Mom. But was it an historic number? More than Monty, for instance? I don't know, seems like there was Carnoustie and the PGA where he dunked it against Paddy, but it's been forever since then.
And that "Some feel" is an oddly passive construction, whereas the author has never been shy about sharing his thoughts on the subject. Truth is that there are most certainly shots, even a few important tee shots, at ANGC where that right-to-left ball flight is needed, though invariable those same holes (ten and thirteen) seem to favor the opposite flight on the second. And there was that Nicklaus guy...
Doug Ferguson takes us through the sturm und drang of Sergio's career, inadvertently reminding folks of Sergio's sometimes off-putting personality:
There was that time at Bethpage Black in the 2002 U.S. Open when he complained about having to play in the rain, suggesting the USGA would have stopped play if Woods had been on the course. He lost a three-shot lead in the final round at Carnoustie in the 2007 British Open, and after losing in a playoff to Padraig Harrington, he said he was playing against "more than the field," intimating that somehow, the golfing gods were out to get him, too.
A year later, Harrington rallied from three down to Garcia on the back nine and beat him at Oakland Hills in the PGA Championship. When asked later if he thought he was going to get his first major, Garcia snapped, "Next question, please. Let's try to keep this as positive as we can, please."
Yeah, not his best look. Of course he was right, the golfing gods were after him, just like they're after all of us....
In summarizing other players who took longer than expected to secure a major, Dough unfortunately indulges in a spot of racial profiling:
Phil Mickelson leaped — not very high — when he finally won his first major at Augusta National in 2004.
Hey, he was just checking his white privilege.... or was it his male privilege, I get so confused...
Bill Fields pulls out the "K" word to describe Sunday:
Five years after saying that he didn’t have the skills to win a major, on a day that would have been the two-time Masters Champion Seve Ballesteros’ 60th birthday, Garcia showed grit and patience — qualities he sometimes lacked at crunch time — that the Spanish legend would have admired.
“It definitely popped into my mind a few times,” Garcia said of the Ballesteros connection. “I’m sure he helped a little bit on some of the shots, some of the putts.”
Another star golfer from Spain, and another two-time winner of the Masters, Jose Maria Olazabal, eagled the par-5 on Sunday en route to his first Green Jacket in 1994. Garcia did it this year, making a 14-footer for a 3. Olazabal had left Garcia a note earlier this week, telling his younger countryman that he had the right stuff to get it done, that he, Olazabal, wasn't sharing his locker in the Champions Locker Room with anybody and . . .Karma, which Garcia so often thought wasn’t in his corner, seemed to be with him this week. On Saturday he got a fortunate bounce over the creek on the par-5 13th. On the same hole Sunday, he hit a poor drive and had to take an unplayable but managed to save par.
This game beats us all down, at least at times, but you don't need to be perfect to win.... Somehow I think that finally dawned on Sergio. That piece also includes this graphic:
Rose not making four was a huge part of the turning point, but we should keep this handy for the next time the subject of potentially lengthening the thirteenth comes up.
Randall Mell captures the change in the man well with this:
The thing is, Garcia’s transformation didn’t really happen over four hours Sunday. Roseand others who know him have seen the change for a long time now. They’ve seen Garcia become more accountable for his lot in life. They’ve seen the work he’s doing.
That’s why Rose liked seeing Augusta National patrons embrace Garcia.
“It’s good for Sergio,” Rose said. “Often, he feels like he's not supported the way he would like to be here in America, and it was encouraging to see the crowd get behind him. I think that they realized that he paid his dues, and they realized that he's been close so many times.”
Garcia gets heckled as much as any player in the game. Just a month ago, Honda Classic fans in the Bear Trap’s 17th hole heaped abuse on him.
“Hope your marriage fails,” one fan shouted.
Sergio has lacked control at times, though it's always been directed at himself. But he's always had his supporters amongst his peers, excluding that Tiger guy.
Jaime Diaz deserves a victory lap for a recent profile of Sergio that speculated about this day, a premise that was derided in unnecessarily derided in certain dark corners of the Internet, closed his piece with this:
The paradox is that Garcia fought more fiercely and effectively than he ever has—just not with himself. “Lately I’ve been getting some good help,” he said. “And kind ofaccepting, too, that if it for whatever reason it didn’t happen, my life is still going to go on. It’s not going to be a disaster.”
Of course, that approach had made it more likely to happen.
It’s true that at tournament’s end, Garcia was at or near the top of the field in greens in regulation, driving distance and driving accuracy. Surely some karma flowed from what would have been the late Seve Ballesteros’ 60th birthday, as well as a note from José Maria Olazábal that pointed out he currently has an opening to share his Champions Room locker. Garcia’s claw-grip putting stroke, while occasionally shaky, stayed smooth enough to miss very few of the short ones that in recent years have undermined him on the biggest occasions.
But most of all, this Masters was won by an El Niño who is finally all grown up.
Now the future Mrs. Garcia's skirt did draw comments from Employee No. 2, but I watched closely and she was able to ascend the hill behind the 18th green without constantly tugging it down. So, it has been determined that the ensemble is rated "Mostly Appropriate". I'm sorry, but the decision of the judges is final...
But remember this from earlier in the week?
The arc of history is long....I just never realized it could bend it like Beckham.
Did you catch the near-miss on No. thirteen?
As Garcia and Justin Rose were playing the 14th hole in the final round, with Rose leading by one, rumors began to swirl on social media about a potential rules infraction by Garcia on the previous hole.
Garcia's drive on the par-5 13th hole hooked left and came to rest under a cluster of thick bushes. The lie was unplayable, so he took a penalty stroke and placed his ball two club-lengths away in a bed of pine straw. A short video of the broadcast circulating on the Internet shows Garcia removing loose impediments from around the ball. The rumor was that Garcia had caused the ball to move, if ever so slightly.
That's what this game needs, another rules controversy... CBS seemingly went out of its way to not show us any high def video, and it's hard to fault them there.
But I'm curious about this rave of CBS' final hole coverage:
CBS golf analyst Nick Faldo set the stage nicely as Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose ambled up to the 18th hole of Augusta National shortly before 7:00 p.m. EST on Sunday.
"It is in every sense of the word match play," Faldo said. "One hole."
CBS delivered on that hole, from great visuals of Rose hitting his drive, to multiple angles of Garcia missing a chance to win from five feet, to a slo-mo replay of Rose and Garcia embracing before heading to the clubhouse prior to the playoffs.
Errr....OK. So, two guys in the last group have separated themselves from the field, and the great Sir Nick declares it match play.... There's nothing particularly wrong with the comment, except perhaps that it could have come three holes earlier.... But wait, there's more:
Where CBS's production team was at its absolute best was on Garcia's championship-winning putt. You can quibble that Nantz talked over the moment ("After so many years, once and for all for Sergio!") but Nantz's reverence for golf always comes off genuine to me. The A-plus stuff came from director Steve Milton, who captured all the great moments around the 18th. The CBS field operators got close enough to hear Garcia wail in excitement after being embraced by his fiancée on the green. There was also a great shot of Rose staring at the scene in front of him and there was Nantz, oddly, shouting out Garcia's haters ("You're wrong again!") before Faldo offered nice perspective on why Garcia had not won in the past and why he won through the "mental scar tissue."
Nantz talking over the moment is not a small quibble, the only difference being that it's usually his tower partner that's babbling on about this or that.
CBS pretty much always delivers the goods visually, but capturing things that happen on the final green is pretty much a lay-up.... Pardon, a tap-in. Oh, and Dear Reader, you've been played, because I didn't share this with you:
I don't watch a lot of golf — your caveat for this column — but I thought CBS was terrific on the final two holes, which is when they needed to be.
Also not a small quibble.... But why would Golf.com give him placement on their homepage?
For some reason the ratings really sucked:
ESPN's streaming numbers were up, but are still fairly small in absolute terms:
Golf fans streamed a record 25.8 million total minutes, a five percent increase from 2016, and the two-day average minute audience of 46,812 was up three percent from the 2016 record of 45,313. Friday’s second round stream from 3-7:30 p.m. ET earned a record average minute audience of 49,038 viewers.
The success story for the Masters on ESPN digital platforms also included a record two-day average of 961,000 unique visitors to golf content on the ESPN App, an increase of 34 percent over 2016. Also, a two-day average of 1.3 million daily unique visitors went to golf content on ESPN.com. Across all ESPN digital platforms, the two-day average minute audience of 23,000 people on golf content was a 14 percent increase from 2016.
I don't know why that would be, given the obvious strength of the leaderboard, including the common thread of Mr. Spieth.
On the list of things about which I couldn't care less...
Well, what took so long? But which is the more ridiculous entry on the list, Ian Poulter (Do you not know the meaning of the word "Best") or Brroks Koepka (who's been on Tour since at least November).
And this:
Actually, the surprising thing is that they don't expect him back until May... So much for the two days he needed.
As for this, you make the call:
OK, I'll grant you Herman Keiser, Trevor Immelman and Charles Coody.... But Zach doesn't belong on that list. And no Doug Ford? No Bob Goalby? Henry Picard, anyone?
As for the Tiger tweet that I noted in yesterday's wrappage, just click here to see Judge Judy's reaction....
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