For un momento last week, a Nike tour newcomer had Casey Martin
playing second violin. It happened when a dashing, crewcut
teenager named Sergio Garcia shot past Martin to take the
second-round lead at Club Campestre in Monterrey, Mexico. Garcia
would falter and finish six shots behind winner Joe Ogilvie in
the Nike Monterrey Open, but what fanaticos de golf will
remember is the way the 18-year-old amateur from Castellon,
Spain, pounded 330-yard drives, left senoritas swooning and had
grown men spouting superlatives.
"Sergio is long, superlong," says junior golf official Pete
Wofford, who watched Garcia cruise to victory two weeks ago in
the Future Collegians World Tour event in Jacksonville. In
Monterrey, Garcia averaged 310 yards per drive and had one
breeze-assisted blast of 371.
Garcia, then 16, made his world debut in the British
Open.
(Stephen Munday/Allsport)
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Back home they call him el Niño. The name has nothing to do with
devilish weather; in fact it carries a whiff of the divine, for
the term el Niño, the Boy, usually refers to the Christ child.
Young Garcia may have run out of miracles in Mexico, but his
career to this point would suit an immortal. The son of Victor
Garcia, a caddie turned teaching pro at Mediterraneo Club de
Campo, and his wife, Consuelo, who ran the pro shop, Sergio took
up golf at age three. As an eight-year-old, using full-sized
Cobra clubs that gave him one of the world's flattest swings,
the boy swung hard and pictured himself as Indiana Jones
cracking a bullwhip. "He had all the ability, and he knew it,"
says Sergio's caddie and friend, José Marquina. "So
aggressive—he never thought of hitting at the green, only the
flag. Even as a little boy he was determined to be Number 1 in
the world."
At 12 he was club champion. At 15 he became the youngest
European Amateur champ in the tournament's history. The next
year Sergio got the Leo DiCaprio treatment at the World Amateur
Team Championship in the Philippines, where he was pursued by
100 or so teenage girls calling, "Sergio, Sergio!" By then he
had also caught the eye of national hero Seve Ballesteros, who
asked him along for two practice rounds before the 1996 British
Open. The nerveless Garcia outdrove his hero on every hole.
Ballesteros, who has called Garcia Spain's "player of the 21st
century," recently worried publicly about the boy's future. In a
newspaper editorial he urged Garcia, who considers Ballesteros
his second dad, to "stay the same person" as he scales the
heights of golf stardom.
Another of the teen's idols is Tom Lehman, who met Garcia at the
'96 British Open. After winning the tournament, Lehman put the
Claret Jug in Garcia's hands and said, "Someday you will win
this."
Asked about Garcia last week at Bay Hill, Lehman said, "Sergio,
he takes it deep. He's a cocky kid who thinks he can beat the
world, and he might be right."
Garcia played like a worldbeater last summer at the European
Masters Amateur, winning by eight strokes. He won the Spanish
Amateur by 10. At the Grand Prix des Landes in France, where the
runner-up was one under par, Garcia was 20 under. At the
Catalonian Open in Barcelona he finished five shots ahead of 132
pros to become the first amateur to win the event.
Last week it appeared he might slam-dunk a field of 143 Nike
tour pros. After a 66-67 start, Garcia was seven ahead of
Martin, the tour's money leader, and led the Monterrey Open by
one. "I couldn't visualize this great start," he said. "I was so
excited to see my name on the leader board." So excited he
couldn't sleep all night? Not quite. "He always sleeps like a
rock. I have to yell, 'Sergio, Sergio!' to wake him," Marquina
says.
Maybe the yelling gave Garcia nightmares of being chased by
flocks of girls. In any case, golf's latest Next Tiger failed to
earn his stripes in Mexico: He ballooned to 75 on Saturday to
drop from contention. On Sunday, though, he rallied for a 72
that left him at eight under, a showing that would have been
worth $2,875 had he been a pro.
"He didn't know the greens here. If he had made a third of his
putts inside 10 feet, he'd have won by five shots," said
tournament director Barry Willardson. Garcia, who expects to
turn pro next year and play the European tour before taking a
shot at the U.S. PGA Tour, made no excuses. "I am disappointed,"
he said in fluent English, "but I will be back." Recalling his
Friday-night lead, the Nike Niño was as cocky as ever. "It's not
normal for someone so young to be on top of the leader board,"
he said. "Not normal, but comfortable."
Then it was back to the hotel, where he indulged his only vice:
marathon sessions in front of the TV, watching cartoons. Asked
to name a favorite, he uses fluent Roadrunnerese: "Meep-meep!"
Catch him if you can. Sergio Garcia may be 0 for 1 against U.S.
pros for the moment, but he's going places fast.
Issue date: March 30, 1998
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