If golf needs colorful characters, Garcia's not one

                    

	A good walk soiled: Garcia was spittin' mad in Miami last weekend. AP
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You may bored to the point of aggravation/ Excited as a lighted fuse/ Sick with the sight of degradation/ Or you may think you have nothing left to lose/ But it don't matter what you feel/ You can beg, you can borrow or steal/ But as long as I'm holding the wheel/ I don't want no spitting on the bus.
-- Steve Gibbons

PGA Tour Commission Tim Finchem would be wise to warble that tune from the aptly-named album Down in the Bunker to Sergio Garcia when they address Garcia's grotty display on the 13th hole of the WGC-CA Championship last Saturday.

"I just missed that putt and wasn't too happy," Garcia said by way of explanation of his watery deed, later growing churlish when media hounds asked him about it the next day.

If he'd had the wherewithal, Garcia might have claimed he was merely showing respect for the cup in keeping with punk rock tradition. In fact, he might have gotten away with his spew if he'd only spit like a baseball player with a quick ptoo! Of course, the next player up would have discovered an unusual moisture condition, but by doing the drip for the camera, Garcia revolted anyone who saw it and succeeded in producing an indelible image that I don't think is particularly good for a sport that many feel is in dire need of colorful characters.

Hey, a good temper tantrum can be fun to watch, and no one does it better than an apoplectic base-throwin', dirt-kickin' manager or steaming slugger who snaps his bat over his knee. Golf has its own storied tradition: John Daly flinging his driver over a fence at the 1997 PGA Championship at Winged Foot and pitching his putter and ball into the drink near the 18th hole of the 2002 Australian PGA. (Granted, his verbally abusing an Aussie official should have wiped the smile off anyone's face.) Grantland Rice described the legendary Bobby Jones as "a short, rotund kid, with the face of an angel and the temper of a timber wolf" for his cussin' and club-chuckin'. Hall of Famer Tommy Bolt was known as "Terrible Tommy" for similar flings, though he admitted he sometimes acted out of a desire to play up to his dyspeptic image rather than uncontrollable pique.

It really is a wonder that such displays don't happen more often in a supremely frustrating, high-pressure sport that should, by all rights, be producing axe-murderers at a record clip. To its credit, golf usually manages to maintain its image as a "gentleman's game." Thus, in an increasingly coarse sporting landscape, Tiger Woods' hoary oaths and epithets still have the power to disconcert and dismay. And that's where Garcia comes in.