MARANA, Ariz. -- First, there's the black-and-white game of golf.
Secondly, then there's the black art of putting.
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| He birdied here, but Sergio Garcia ditched the standard putter late in his match with John Senden. (AP) |
His troubles with the shortest club in the bag has been detailed to a painful degree over the past five years, but Wednesday at the Accenture World Match Play Championship, ingenuity and desperation became hard to separate.
In a move that caught the veterans in the field by surprise, Garcia tossed his 3-iron from the bag and toted two putters around, switching from a standard-sized model to a mid-length belly putter late in the round, then making a clinching putt on the 16th to beat Australia's John Senden, 3 and 2.
In a field composed of the most elite stars in the world, nobody could conjure up the name of any player who'd done something similar in competition. Though, from a practical standpoint as putting relates to the mathematical establishment of par, it's not such a bad idea.
"We're allowed 36 putts; that's why it adds up to 72," Colin Montgomerie observed, grinning. "Why have 13 clubs for the 36 of them and only one for the other 36? Carry more than two."
Garcia last year had seemingly found the panacea for his pitiable putting woes, which for a player of his caliber were becoming increasingly harder to watch. He nearly won the British Open and ranked tied for 15th in putting on the PGA Tour, a momentous improvement of 143 positions over his awful 2006 average.
But right out of the chute this year, he has been experimenting, switching back and forth between a left-hand-low and conventional grip in the middle of rounds, and swapping out putters daily. Garcia recalled playing with two putters in the bag once before but couldn't recall when.
For the headshrinkers, the psychological merits of such a decision can be bandied about, of course. On the positive front, if he putts poorly, he has a fallback plan. But mentally, failing to commit to a putter might subconsciously undermine the whole endeavor.
"I'm sure it's a deal where he has something he can go to if he's having a problem," said Vijay Singh, who often has switched between belly and short putters, but never in the same round. "I'm sure it's a confidence thing."
The Fijian also added that even when his putting was at its worst, he never considered such a drastic plan.
"I did make a decision early on and I went with it for pretty much the whole round," Garcia said. "But then I started not feeling quite as comfortable. I hit a couple not very good putts. So I decided to go with the safe route the last couple of holes."
The short and long of it: Garcia missed a six-footer for par on the 14th to lose the hole, but made a clinching eight-footer for birdie on the 16th to cement the match.
"It felt really good on the putting green," Garcia said of the shorter option. "But it's different, the putting green is, than when you're out there on the heat of battle and the pressure is on. So I wanted to take just like, you can call it a safety net, just in case I didn't feel quite as comfortable."
Do the guys with white ambulances, padded cells and strait-jackets use nets to catch the crazies?
Phil Mickelson used two drivers at the Masters, each of them set up for a different ball flight, and that's a club a player will use a maximum of 14 times per round. So, like Monty said, who's loco here, exactly?
Garcia's plan, by the way, was to ride the shorter putter all the way in, since he'd been practicing with it most of the week. But the insurance policy paid off, obviously. "That was my goal," he said. "I liked the things we worked on my putting yesterday; they feel good. But I still have a little work to do. I've still got to get a little better at it."
