Sergio Garcia is 0-for-72 at major championships. Four times he has been the runner-up at a major with 12 top 5s and 22 career top 10s in those 72 attempts.
Once the golden child of golf, the Spanish wunderkind who was supposed to challenge Tiger Woods for major championships for decades is now 36. Woods is no longer his biggest obstacle and slaying Tiger is not his focus. Garcia now faces a crop of young stars who grew up on the idea that everything Tiger did is possible for them, and the man with one of golf's sweetest swings is now trying to figure out how to beat them.
Garcia doesn't have to look far to find inspiration coming into this week as he tries, for the 73rd time, to pick up his first major title. The last four major champions have all been first-time winners, and in the year of the first-time major champion, there would be no better way to end the major season than with Garcia hoisting the Wanamaker Trophy.
"It's obviously nice to see, nice to see new major winners," said Garcia on Wednesday. "I would love to make it five in a row. Obviously, it would be very nice, but we'll see. It's a long week, and like I said before, my goal is to play well, to give myself another shot at winning a tournament, winning a major and then see what I can come up with."
It's not just the recent trend of first-time major winners that points to Garcia as a contender at Baltusrol this week. Garcia's play has been at a very high level the last month, as he's finished T5 at the last two majors and won the HP Byron Nelson back in May. Garcia has long been one of the PGA Tour's best ball-strikers and most accurate drivers, but it's his mental approach that has helped him see a renaissance of sorts recently.
"I think that probably the way I look at things now has changed a little bit," said Garcia. "I think that, you know, experience and age, it's definitely made me a little bit calmer out on the course. Where before, you know, if I make a couple bogeys, I would kind of get a little bit angry. Now I seem to take it a little bit easier. ...
"Two weeks ago [at The Open Championship], I knew that maybe I wasn't feeling amazing but I fought hard. When I made a couple mistakes, I didn't let it bother me. I knew there was some tough holes. So I waited for my opportunities, and thanks to that, I finished top five. That obviously encourages me a lot."
That maturity was something that the younger, fiery Garcia lacked on the golf course. When he combines his sweet swing with a more even-keeled approach, it yields better results in majors where the courses are set up to frustrate players when they hit bad shots.
A calmer approach has helped to ease some of the pressure on Garcia from himself.
"No, not anymore," said Garcia when asked if it's hard for him to understand how he's had so many top 10s without winning a major.
"Maybe five or 10 years ago it would have but not anymore. I understand how difficult it is to win every week. I always said it, it doesn't matter if it's a major. It doesn't matter where it is; it doesn't matter if it's in the U.S., in Asia, in Europe, in Africa. It's tough to win. Nowadays, there's the level of play from guys coming up and everything, it's so much higher than it used to be. So that is great for the game of golf, and you know, the only thing I can do is just keep giving myself chances and just wait for it.
"Hopefully it will happen. If it doesn't happen, it's not going to change my life. I'm not going to go in a cave and you know kind of stay there until I die because I didn't win a major or anything like that. It's not that serious.
"But it would be -- I'm not going to lie -- it would be nice to get at least one."
Garcia says the right things, and his new approach -- seeming to play for himself rather than worry about expectations -- has paid dividends. It is what has him in the conversation to win a major again. He was close at the U.S. Open and grinded out a top-five finish at The Open two weeks back. On a course like Baltusrol, which puts a premium on being in the fairway and being a terrific ball-striker, doing so is a must.
Garcia checks off those boxes. He's sixth on the PGA Tour in strokes gained on approaches to the green and is 11th in strokes gained off the tee. The short game is always the question mark for Garcia, but he seems confident in his scrambling abilities after not having his A-game from tee-to-green at Royal Troon but still coming out with a top five.
A Garcia win would be the perfect end to the 2016 major season, which, if his career has taught us anything, means it probably won't happen. He has never capitalized on a major opportunity, but maybe this new, calmer Sergio Garcia can do what the old Sergio Garcia never could.
