Ranking Sergio Garcia’s Wild Tantrums, Epic Meltdowns and Controversial Moments
So long, Sergio Garcia. It looks as if you’re done being relevant.
At 42, Your Friend Sergio still hasn’t grown up and is incapable of exiting gracefully. He said last week before the LIV Golf Team Championship at Doral that he was comfortable giving up his DP World Tour membership (for not playing the minimum four events) and his eligibility for next year’s Ryder Cup. His Ryder Cup exit isn’t his fault, though, according to him. It’s the other players upset about his LIV defection that are the problem. He is the real victim here. Uh-huh.
“You can see that some of the guys on the other side don't really want me there,” Garcia said. “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone … I’d rather be away from that, as much as it hurts, and make sure Europe has the best chance of winning then me being there and three or four guys are going to be upset … it was a hard decision but unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like I’m very welcome there.”
In May, when a PGA Tour official slapped him with a penalty for exceeding the three-minute time limit for a lost-ball search, a petulant Garcia said, “I can’t wait to get off this tour,” making it clear he was about to jump to LIV Golf and its greener and far less competitive pastures. In July at the British Open, Garcia said he “didn’t feel loved” on that tour and was glad to leave. (P.S.—You’re running out of legit tours to quit, Sergio.)
Something about the pressure and frustration of professional golf often brought out the worst in Sergio, who played the role of a spoiled, churlish, silver-spooned brat. Off the course, he could be an entirely different person. The Ranking knows a teen who played nine holes with Garcia thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Garcia made a lifetime memory for him and his younger brothers, whom Garcia insisted should get their clubs and play along. It was a nice touch and he’s done countless numbers of similar things behind the scenes.
Garcia enjoyed plenty of on-course success, too. Thirty-six wins around the globe. An unexpected Masters title in a playoff. (Nice going, Justin Rose.) A Players Championship in a playoff. (Nice going, Paul Goydos.) Lots and lots of Ryder Cups. (Nice going, Sergio.)
It is unfortunate that many golf fans remember those less than his career-long list of woes, whines, complaints, tantrums, pity parties, selfish comments and slow play.
Here are Sergio’s biggest on-course controversies, tantrums, spats and meltdowns, arranged by The Ranking, as a going-away present.
10. Garcia was a controversial participant in the 2022 BMW PGA Championship, as were 17 other LIV Golf players. Queen Elizabeth’s death postponed the second round so Garcia, who’d shot 76, withdrew without explanation and was next seen posing for photos at the Alabama-Texas football game across the ocean in Austin. Garcia thus wasted a spot that could’ve gone to first-alternate Alfredo Garcia-Heredia, a rising young player battling to keep his tour status and who is a close friend of Garcia’s favorite Ryder Cup partner, Jon Rahm. Too bad, Alfredo. Roll Tide …
9. When his 7-iron shot came up short of the 3rd green in the 2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club, Garcia swung the club in anger so hard at the ground that it chopped an ESPN tee-box microphone in half and, according to GolfCentralDaily, sent a blast measuring 225 decibels through the headphones of sound man Marty Bunkum, who was listening in the broadcast truck. Sergio bogeyed the hole. (“Speak up! My ears are still ringing! What’d you say C-3PO was doing with a pole?”)
8. After slipping on a tee shot at the 1999 World MatchPlay Championship at Wentworth, Garcia removed the offending shoe and angrily fired it against the tournament sponsor’s sign. His manager, Jose Marquina, dutifully retrieved it. Garcia then kicked the shoe, which just missed hitting the match referee in the face. Well, Sergio never was worth a damn on corner kicks …
7. Garcia threw a pity party for himself at the 2012 Masters after a third-round 75 left him 10 shots off the lead. “I’m not good enough in any major,” he whined. “I don’t have the thing I need to have. I’ve been trying for 13 years and I don’t feel capable of winning.” Seeking sympathy, he instead sounded like a scolded, defeated child. Five years later, he shockingly won the Masters. Maybe Dr. Phil is right, child psychology can work on adults.
6. The King of Sore Losers fell to Padraig Harrington in a playoff at the 2007 British Open at Carnoustie. “I’m playing against a lot of guys out there, more than the field,” Garcia huffed, implying that the gods were against him. In other words, just like Tiger Woods, the USGA, Augusta National and assorted rules officials on two tours. Garcia dumped his approach shot in a bunker on the playoff’s first hole, made bogey to Harrington’s birdie and immediately fell two shots behind. “I should write a book on how not to miss a shot in the playoff and shoot 1 over,” Garcia grumbled. Sure, but it would be a work of fiction. Here’s a suggested working title: “Never on Sunday: The Story of Sergio’s Putting.”
5. Rain was heavy during the 2002 U.S. Open’s second round at Bethpage Black, where Tiger Woods finished before it got bad. “It always seems like there’s one guy who’s lucky when he needs to be,” griped Garcia, who caught the worst of it and claimed the USGA would have stopped play if Tiger had been on the course. Garcia had his chance to take down Woods in the final round but shot 74 and finished six shots back. Did someone say graceless? “He (Tiger) did what he had to do,” Garcia said, “but he did it because I let him.” Congrats to Tiger? Nahhh. All 15 of those majors were probably just luck.
4. This one is multiple choice: A) Sergio flung his driver down into a barranca after an errant tee shot during the 2018 Valero Texas Open, then embarrassingly climbed down a thorny embankment to retrieve it; B) he angrily clocked a gorse bush that inhibited his swing during the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale and hurt his shoulder, requiring medical attention (but he did play on); C) he made a bad swing on a par 3 in a 2011 event in Thailand, then helicoptered the offending club far into the lake in front of him; D) he slammed his putter so hard on a sprinkler head after a lousy putt in the 2017 Dell Technologies Championship that it bent and he was forced to putt with three other clubs the rest of the round, including his driver.
3. The mutual dislike between Garcia and Tiger Woods was common knowledge. Asked a joking question at the 2013 European Tour Awards dinner if he’d invite Tiger to dinner during the U.S. Open the following month, Garcia said in jest, “We will have him ‘round every night. We will serve fried chicken.” Garcia later apologized for the inferred racial stereotype in a joke gone wrong. Garcia’s later dig at Woods: “He called me a whiner. He’s probably right. But that’s probably the first thing he’s told you (media) guys in 15 years that’s true.”
2. A writer for ESPN.com called it “gag-inducing” when Garcia spit into the cup at Doral’s 13th hole after missing a par putt during the 2007 CA Championship. Besides being disgusting and unhygienic, Garcia showed an utter lack of respect for his fellow pros the gallery, television viewers and golf. In a matter surely unrelated, Tiger Woods stretched his lead to four shots during that round en route to victory. Hereby dubbed The Clobber By The Slobber …
1. Garcia was disqualified from the 2019 Saudi International’s second round because of “serious misconduct” in which he intentionally damaged five greens with his clubs, badly scuffing five of them (marks equivalent to deer or camel tracks, a tournament official said) and taking a divot out of another. Just one day earlier, Garcia suffered a meltdown after a bad bunker shot, taking multiple manic swipes in the sand. Garcia, who’d received a large appearance fee to play, apologized for vandalizing the greens and said he accepted his disqualification. Yeah, as if you had a choice in the matter.