This week there will be no doubt which side of the Atlantic Garcia hails from. He will tee up for Europe against a Woods-led U.S. squad in what has become golf’s greatest showdown, the biennial Ryder Cup. While America boasts the world’s most successful golfers, Europe has won the last two Cups and five of the last seven (this one will be played outside Boston). But the stalwarts of those European triumphs–Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer–are gone from the team, and Europe’s elite dozen will feature seven Ryder Cup rookies. (By contrast, the ‘99 Yanks have only one rook, superstar David Duval.) But Garcia is like no rookie since Tiger first burned bright. “This kid is unbelievable,” says U.S. Ryder Cup captain Ben Crenshaw. “He’s magic.” Which is why it’s so easy to root for the baby-faced lad they call “El Nino” (The Kid).
Literally raised on a golf course–his dad was the pro at a club in the small Mediterranean town of Castellon–Garcia won 70 amateur titles in six years. At 16, he held Spain’s under-16, under-18, under-21 and open amateur crowns. “Sergio not only has skills that are uncommon for a boy of 19, but he also has mental control,” says Spanish golfing legend Ballesteros, who is Garcia’s hero. “That converts him into a bomb–a first-class player.”
Garcia demonstrated plenty of mental toughness–and youthful resilience–after his first pro major, a disastrous British Open in July. He fired a first-day 89 and left the course in tears, then shot an 83 the next day. By that night, he was home in Spain enjoying an omelet with his family. “We were talking about what happened,” says his manager, Jose Marquina, “and he said, ‘British Open 1999 is not in my mind anymore.’ I don’t know how he did it, but he did it very well.” Garcia explains it this way: “I just thought, ‘Well, just forget it. It’s been a bad tournament and that’s all. We’ll come back next week’.” The next week he won a local Spanish tournament by five strokes. And a month later, he took the run at Tiger in the PGA.
Garcia relishes his nickname because it permits him to act the kid off the course, where his tastes run to cartoons, videogames and yo-yo tricks. When he’s home, he still plays tennis and soccer with his pals. While he just got his driver’s license, his father, Victor, says that Sergio “does not exactly have a curfew, but knows he can’t stay out too late.” When Garcia signed a five-year contract with Adidas in April, says Marquina, his first question wasn’t about the size of the deal, but when he’d get to meet Adidas-endorsing tennis star Anna Kournikova.
Like Woods, Garcia is consistently long and straight off the tee, but his putting is more erratic. Still, since turning pro in April, Garcia has already won $1.3 million and has risen faster in the worldwide rankings–he’s number 25 now–than even Woods did as a rookie. “I said when I turned pro I wanted to be the No. 1 golfer,” says Garcia, who speaks English competently, if not colorfully. “So I knew I was going to be a rival for Tiger.” He already can whip Woods regularly on the golf videogame he favors. “He thinks that’ll make it easier for real because he’s played him before,” jokes Marquina.
Garcia’s unabashed enthusiasm is a crowd-pleaser. After one tournament round, he plunged into the gallery, shaking hands, signing autographs and even kissing babies. During a practice session at the Masters, he spotted a man in a wheelchair and veered off the fairway to say hello and deliver an autographed ball to him. (The man didn’t know who Garcia was.) As a foreigner, Garcia may not usurp Woods’s standing with American golf fans. But his emergence could produce the most exciting rivalry since the heyday of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. After watching their PGA duel, Crenshaw beamed, “That’s the future of golf.”
Ballesteros, who captained Europe’s winning ‘97 Ryder Cup team, warns against handicapping the teenager with too many expectations. “He needs time to mature as a person and a sportsman,” says Seve. So no one should expect him to backbone the European team and whip Tiger in the final match to clinch the Ryder Cup. But then again, no one should be surprised if he does.
