Garcia in PGA:
The flim-flam man at Oakland Hills
BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - Step right up, folks, just step right up, and get your bets down!It was just your average charming con man, setting up shop at Hart Plaza, the better to fleece the good folk of Detroit.
Easy come, easy go? No, good people! No way! It's easy come, easy come, people. Easy come, easy come! Like taking candy from a baby. Just beat Maestro Garcia. And remember, at no time do his fingers leave his hands.
It was a con game, OK. But the guy didn't have that little folding suitcase, and this wasn't downtown Detroit, where the swells and the n'er-do-wells roam. Maestro Sergio Garcia set up shop at Oakland Hills, some miles out of town, but the con was just as sweet. Garcia, the former charming Spanish kid, did it with smoke and mirrors and an unabashed shrug.
Get your money down, folks, and get your wallet out.
(Suckers.)
You watch Garcia play Oakland Hills Thursday, in the opening round of the PGA, and you got to get your money down. You watch him play Oakland Hills like a weekender with a six-pack and the giggles, and you got to look for action.
Pay up.
“I scrambled nicely,” Garcia said. Was he fighting a grin? No, not likely. Garcia is never subtle. He must have meant it. But surely, in a quiet moment, he's got to look skyward and say “Thanks.”
There are 14 driving fairways on a golf course (given the normal complement of four par-3 holes), and if you hit a measly four of them in a round, you're going back to the cluhouse and hide in the corner. You don't want the guys asking, “How ya hittin' 'em?” You go 4-for-14 in fairways hit, and you ain't hittin' 'em.
That's 29 percent. Mathematically, that's like hitting .290 in baseball. Not bad. But in golf, that's more like .029.
“There were a couple of tee shots here and there that I wasn't 100 percent,” Garcia said, with a straight face. “And I felt good.”
Gitchour money down, folks. He's shooting a bundle.
There are 18 greens on a golf course. In baseball, you go 9-for-18 every now and again, and pretty soon they're handing you a new contract, inasmuch as .500 is a nice, round negotiable number in any league. In golf, you go 9-for-18 in hitting greens, and pretty soon you're playing a mini-tour in Idaho.
He's rolling boxcars, folks. He's goin' for a bundle.
“So hopefully,” Garcia said, “I can go to the range and get a little bit more confidence in my driving abilities, because you have to be in the fairways on this course.”
This was the “monster” of Ben Hogan, winning the 1951 U.S. Open, after Robert Trent Jones, the golf course architect just setting out on his way to the Hall of Fame, grew some rough on this course. And Hogan could hit a fairway. This was somewhat the same course, retooled by Trent's son, Rees, who has also grown some rough.
Fairways and greens, they say in golf.
Double or nothing, folks. Double you money on the next swing. And see, at no time do his fingers leave his hands, and at no time does the ball go where the young man is aiming.
Garcia is known for that frolic at Medinah in 1999, the PGA, a kid putting a skip in the heartbeat of Tiger Woods. Hitting that ball, crazy, off a tree root at the 16th, then chasing it, grand-jeteing up the fairway, Barishnikof in golf spikes.
But this is Oakland Hills, nine years later. No frolicsome kid anymore. No tree roots, no crazy shots, and to be sure, hitting four fairways and nine greens would hardly inspire the dance in anyone.
“You can't be missing a lot of fairways and expect to do well throughout the whole week,” Garcia said. “It's too much of a gamble.”
Really? Keep going 4-for-14 in fairways, and 9-for-18 in greens the rest of the tournament, and you'll be wearing the crown, pal.
Garcia shot a 1-under-par 69 that way. Not that anyone keeps records of total shambles, but this works out to one of the great rounds in PGA history.
“I putted good,” Garcia said.
He needed 26 putts, a number if golf usually preceded by the adjective “merely” or “only” or “you gotta be kiddin'.”
Once he groped his way to the green, he was pure as a laser.
“One-under-par on this course,” Garcia said. “I'm thrilled with it.”
Suckers.
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