As soon as the pairings were announced for the Saturday round of the Players Championship, the TV commentators began to speculate about what might happen between Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods who have a long history of not liking each other very much.
The relationship took a turn for the worse when Garcia botched a shot on the second hole which is a 532 yard par 5. Then, during a short weather break, Garcia told the press that he thought that Tiger, who was on the other side of the fairway from him, had cause the disturbance that had caused the distraction that had caused his bad shot.
It looked on the replay that Sergio was distracted by the crowd. But, he told NBC, “I wouldn’t say he didn’t see that I was ready, but you do have a feel when the other guy is going to hit. Right as I was on top of the backswing, he pulled a 5-wood or a 3-wood out of the rough and, obviously, everybody started screaming, so that didn’t help very much.”
Actually, on the replay, Woods puts his hand to his mouth and points over at Garcia as if trying to quiet the gallery while Garcia was hitting. Tiger later said that the marshal told him that Sergio had already hit. So, who knows? The idea that Woods was deliberately trying to disrupt Garcia’s shot seems a little farfetched at best.
But Garcia could not restrain himself from going onto Twitter and saying, “I’m not gonna lie, he’s not my favorite guy to play with. He’s not the nicest guy on tour.”
When told that he would not be paired again with Woods for the final round at SawGrass, Garcia again took to Twitter, “It’s good for both of us. We don’t enjoy each other’s company. Don’t need a rocket engineer to figure that out.”
Rain squalls came up as the players were on the final holes at SawGrass on Saturday and they were given a choice of finishing the hole they were playing or to mark their balls and finish the round on Sunday morning. Tiger said he was hungry, put up his club and headed for the restaurant to watch the Knicks game.
As it turned out, that shot that Sergio claims that Tiger cost him wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. Garcia self destructed on the last two holes and Tiger Woods won his first Players Championship in 12 years.
