“I’m not going to lie. He’s not my favorite guy to play with. He’s not the nicest guy on tour. We don’t enjoy each other’s company. You don’t have to be a rocket engineer to figure that out.’’
— Sergio Garcia on Tiger Woods at yesterday’s Players Championship
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Good for Sergio.
Bad for Sergio.
Good for Sergio that he had the gumption to speak his mind when he thought Woods had wronged him on Saturday — claiming Woods intentionally distracted him while he tried to play a shot on the second hole.
Bad for Sergio because he did not have his facts straight. As Woods suggested afterward and as TV replays confirmed, it was clear Woods did not intentionally distract Garcia in that circumstance.
Good for Sergio for standing up to — and calling out — Woods for gamesmanship, something every player on the PGA Tour knows he takes part in on occasion.
Bad for Sergio for failing to stick it to Woods, collapsing in the absurd way he did in yesterday’s final round of The Players, during which he went from tied for the lead with Woods with two holes to play to losing to him by six shots after a humiliating “Tin Cup’’ moment on No. 17 with two tee shots in the water.
Good for Sergio for injecting a breath of fresh air into the politically-correct world we live in that discourages us from speaking our minds and telling the world what we really think.
Bad for Sergio that his refreshing candor sometimes gets him into trouble — as it did yesterday and became a distraction he was not mentally strong enough to overcome.
Good for Sergio if his call-out of Woods — whom he has more disdain for than a root canal — motivates him to perform better.
Bad for Sergio his call-out of Woods did not make him perform better. It instead added more pressure on him and drew unwanted attention to him, with fans at some tee boxes yesterday mockingly yelling, “Come on, Tiger,’’ after Garcia teed off.
Good for Sergio that he rattled Woods’ cage by calling him out — even if it was in error on this occasion.
Bad for Sergio that he rattled Woods’ cage, because the cold-blooded-killer Woods will now crush Sergio like a pesky gnat from now on when they play together. Woods is already 13-3-4 against Garcia when they play in the same pairing, including 7-0 on weekends.
Good for Sergio for bringing a little bit of NFL and NBA bad blood to the Mr. Nice Guy PGA Tour by going public with his dislike for a competitor, spicing up the sport that is often too milquetoast.
Bad for Garcia that he performed like the league-weakling Kansas City Chiefs or Charlotte Bobcats yesterday after he riled up his nemesis, Woods.
If you like Garcia, that last 30 minutes of his round was difficult to watch.
He was so shell-shocked afterward, he sounded delusional and in denial.
“I’m not going to say I lost [the tournament],’’ Garcia tried to reason. “Tiger was 13-under. I still had a make par there [on 17] and par on 18 … but I definitely stopped winning it.’’
Um, OK.
Asked if the Woods flap were a distraction to him, Garcia stammered, “Well, I mean … was it a distraction? Maybe a little bit. But I mean, it really distracted me at that time, then after that you kind of move on and you try to figure things out.’’
He, of course, never did in the end.
Asked if he had the “Woods thing’’ to do all over again, if he would do anything differently, Garcia said, “No, no. You know, I don’t have any regrets of anything. I don’t know, it sounds like I was the bad guy here. I was the victim.’’
Good for Sergio for being so honest.
Bad for Sergio for being so clueless.
Garcia, as he has maddeningly done far too often in his enigmatic career, once again was a victim — because he victimized himself.