After his play-off victory in the HSBC Champions event recently, Sergio Garcia has jumped to a career-best rank of No. 2 in the world. He now has only Tiger Woods to topple, writes Lawrence Donegan.
It has been a long time coming but almost a decade after he was heralded as golf’s next big thing, Sergio Garcia stood exactly where many have long expected him to be: as the world’s second-ranked player behind Tiger Woods.
The Spaniard vaulted the longstanding No. 2, Phil Mickelson, after his play-off win over a Ryder Cup colleague, Oliver Wilson, at the HSBC Champions event at the Sheshan International in Shanghai recently, becoming the first European to hold the No. 2 spot since Colin Montgomerie 12 years ago.
“Right after winning the Players’ Championship (in May) I thought that I could get to No. 3 — I felt No. 2 was still difficult,” Garcia said after securing the 19th win of his career, and the £530,700 that went with it. “Being No. 2 is awesome. I have never achieved it before. It is something extra for the year. I am now looking forward to working hard and getting better.”
Awesome, perhaps, but like everyone else Garcia is well aware the history books have very short chapters on the life and times of world No. 2s. What matters is winning majors and in that department he, like Montgomerie, remains bereft.
Garcia is, though, in pole position in the inaugural Race to Dubai, the season-long competition which has replaced the European Tour’s order of merit and which comes with a $10m bonus fund. This is nice money if you can get it but at this stage of his career Garcia, who already has it, is more concerned with trophies.
“I have been trying for a while, but winning a major is the next goal,” said the Spaniard, who came second in the 1999 US PGA to Woods and has been edged out twice by Padraig Harrington in two years, the 2007 Open at Carnoustie and in this year’s US PGA at Oakland Hills.
These were crushing defeats but it is to Garcia’s credit that they do not appear to have crushed his spirit, nor his desire. While his prospects of fulfilling his major ambitions can rightly be described as odds-on, his hopes of achieving the No. 1 spot may be judged to be about the same as Cristiano Ronaldo signing for Real Madrid during January’s transfer window.
“It depends how much time Tiger takes off when he comes back and if I keep playing well,” Garcia said. “But I have never been this close to No. 1, so it’s just exciting to be there. If I play the way I’m playing I probably can overtake him, but Tiger is the kind of player you don’t see very often in history, there are very few like him — if there has ever been one like him.”
OFFICIAL WORLD RANKINGS1. Tiger Woods (US) 14.10 points2. Sergio Garcia (Spain) 8.683. Phil Mickelson (US) 8.154. Vijay Singh (Fiji) 7.545. Padraig Harrington (Ireland) 7.276. Robert Karlsson (Sweden) 5.327. Camilo Villegas (Colombia) 5.298. Lee Westwood (England) 4.919. Anthony Kim (US) 4.9010. Henrik Stenson (Sweden) 4.88© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
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