By Kent Gray
When Sergio Garcia turned 40 on Jan.9, golf fans everywhere were left feeling decidedly old. Many remember that precocious Spanish teen scissor-kicking his way to stardom at the 81st PGA Championship like it were yesterday, not mid-August in the final year of the last century.

There have been countless moments since that mirrored that exuberant mid-fairway leap (think ridiculous highs and heavy, reputational landings) when Garcia briefly held the third round lead at Medinah in 1999 before finishing a shot behind Tiger Woods, then only 23 himself and en-route to just his second major.

Garcia’s long-overdue major breakthrough at Augusta National in 2017 aside, a pair of Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) stats speak volumes of his longevity at the pointy end of world golf. He remains to this day the youngest player to crack the world’s top 10 (a week after his 20th birthday) and perhaps even more impressively continues to extend the second longest streak – 20.5 years – inside the top 100 behind Phil Mickelson. Indeed, Garcia has not dipped lower than 82nd during two decades gripping (and re-gripping, and re-gripping) fans around the world with his immense talent and often fiery passion for the game.

Ranked 41st at the time of press, the Ryder Cupper started 2020 in search of his 17th European Tour title (and an 11th on the PGA Tour). Garcia’s 16th victory at the KLM Open last September marked a career-best third successive year he’d recorded a European Tour victory but even that couldn’t completely erase the troughs of 2019, lowlighted by his DQ from the inaugural Saudi International last Feb. when five Royal Greens G&CC putting surfaces and a bunker bore the brunt of the Spaniard’s always simmering temper.

In an intriguing, no holds barred interview ahead of the 2nd Saudi International, Garcia candidly reflects on his infamous tantrum in King Abdullah Economic City and revealed his plans to continue winning on and off the course well into the new decade.

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I don’t know if it released pressure or not. Obviously it [winning a major] is something I wanted to do for a really long time, you know for my whole career, and it’s always nice to be able to have that under your sleeve. But it still doesn’t mean everything is over. We are competitors and you still want to keep getting better, you still want to be playing well and having chances at winning many other tournaments so hopefully, we will be able to do that for many years.

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My last season was decent. You know, a couple up and downs here and there, but overall it’s been fairly good. I started the year pretty well with a lot of good top 10s, obviously calmed down a little bit but then I got the win in Holland which was great to play there for the first time as a professional. To win was a dream come true. Hopefully, we can get going again this year.

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I think every year it is important to get off to a good start but now that the front end of the season, it’s a lot more heavy loaded, it’s even more important. From March till July, you have really big tournaments pretty much every month so it is important to have a really good start of the year that can carry you on throughout the whole year.

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I haven’t changed my routine much. You know the majors are moved forward a little bit and you just got to try to peak a little bit earlier than maybe before, but it doesn’t really change much, the way you practise or get ready for your season.

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My wife Angela, she’s a [former Golf Channel] journalist and obviously it’s nice to have her on our side and look for her opinion here and there but she’s got a much more important job than that which is being a mum and that’s the most important thing for me. Obviously, she is a very smart woman and an unbelievable person and very pretty, at least in my eyes. But the most important thing is she’s an unbelievable mum and that’s what I treasure the most.

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I feel terrible about what happened last year. Obviously there were some outside things that got me to that point.  I want to go there. I want to show my respect for them. You know, the easy thing would have been for me to hide and never come back there, but I love the people there, all the people we met and everyone that takes care of us during the tournament.

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At the end of the day, those things unfortunately happened. We are not robots, you know we are humans and sometimes we lose our temper here and there. I think at the end of the day the most important thing is to learn from those things and to make sure that all the good things that you do are more than the bad ones. It’s just a matter of looking back and trying to learn as much as possible. Unfortunately, it just shows that we are human.

Quality Sport Images

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Yes, it would be nice to put on a good show at Royal Greens after what happened last year. I did enjoy the country itself and the people there so hopefully, we can go there, play nicely, have a good week and leave with our head held up high.

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I enjoy the travelling we do and it’s not a huge thing but obviously, yeah, I do like to invest here and there. I try to see some opportunities that might look pretty good and give us a good opportunity of achieving something nicely there. We have some good friends that are in the restaurant business that we partner with and obviously starting golf course design is something that will probably start in the near future so there are several things that are going on.

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Golf course design is something that I would love to do as my career goes along but we will see. You kind of go with whatever feels right at that moment. I don’t know where I will be in 10 or 12 years. I don’t know if I will be playing on the Champions Tour or maybe spending time with the family and looking for hobbies and other things to do, so it’s difficult to say.

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We are very proud with the work that we have done with The Sergio Garcia Foundation, you know with all three foundations we have in Spain, Switzerland and the US. We’ve done a whole bunch of different things throughout the last 17 years trying to help special needs golf. We’ve invested in research for cancer in children, in young people obviously. We invested in an X-ray room in a hospital in Madrid. So, we are always trying to help as many as we can.

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I think the young people now definitely have a better chance than when I started. I’m not saying that I didn’t have a good chance, obviously, I did with my dad being a professional golfer and me living next to a golf course so that obviously helped. But I think nowadays it’s a little bit easier to join different clubs, to be able to go and play and all of those things kind of help you to level up your game.

The post Play it again, Sergio appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Meet the other teen sensation tearing it up on the MENA Tour

With Kent Gray
His namesake is the late, great and sadly missed American actor Robin Williams but the teen version from England insists he’s no comedian himself. He also shares the same middle name as golf’s GOAT but Robin ‘Tiger’ Williams, the 18-year-old junior Ryder Cupper from Peterborough, insists that’s where the similarities with Tiger Woods begin and end.

Don’t be fooled by the plus-four handicapper’s modesty though. Williams’ record-equalling eight-stroke romp to victory in the Journey to Jordan #2 Championship last month, sealed with a Tiger-esque five straight birdies to close out his final round 66 at Ayla Golf Club, was the MENA Tour debut dreams are made of.

Williams, who followed in the soft-spike marks of Dubai’s Rayhan Thomas (2016 Dubai Creek Open) and Dutchman Pierre Junior Verlaar (2017 Royal Golf Mohammedia Open in Morocco) and proceeded Josh Hill (Al Ain Open) as an amateur winner on the the regional Pro-Am circuit, talked to Golf Digest Middle East after his wire-to-wire runaway in Aqaba.

yeah, yeah, I’ve watched most of his [Robin Williams] films. And yeah, I love them to bits. I watched the thing he did, the golf thing about Tiger Woods, stuff like that, the Scottish accent one about golf, yeah I love comedy. I think it’s just Mrs. Doubtfire I haven’t watched, which apparently is the best one so I need to watch that one.

Do I have any comedic ability? No, definitely not. I’m definitely not the person to make a lot of jokes. I don’t like to get too excited, or amped out. I’m just kind of low key. I think my friends will say that I’m very calm and will just keep a low profile. Very low key.

Saying that, there was a little fist pump when I won in Jordan because I knew how much it meant to win that tournament and to win it by that much was special. Still, I would say I like to keep everything level on and off the golf course, but I probably get more excited on the golf course.

When people call me Tiger I don’t really see there’s many similarities between us two, except our middle name. Because he’s got different parents, different ethnic background, different culture, different beliefs and stuff like that. I think the only thing me and him share is a middle name and the love for the same sport. So, yeah, I can take it as kind of motivation but I like to always see myself as an individual. Robin Williams. I think Tigers just a name that I have.

The Junior Ryder Cup near Paris last year was a great experience. Because golf is such an individual sport, there’s not many times that you get to play team sport, and I’ve represented England at a national level and to represent Europe at the biggest stage for junior golf is very cool,  just to walk inside the ropes and to chat with most of the [senior Ryder Cup] guys and see them warm up and how they play. I think the biggest thing was how they dealt with the crowds and everything, to just keep going and keep their patience. It was quite cool to see.

The Ryder Cup, that’s on the bucket list, definitely. It was an experience that I want to have again and hope fingers crossed, one day if everything goes my way that will happen, but time will only tell.

it was nice to spend some time with Tommy Fleetwood and his caddy Ian Finnis at the British Masters, pick their brains. Tommy’s just such a down to earth guy and just ask him how it was when he was an amateur and when he turned professional, and the struggle that it was and how he got to the stage where he is now. It was cool picking his caddy’s brains on what they do week to week… little secrets.

Growing up in South Africa was good because I had, basically, all my family there. But I didn’t play golf there, I didn’t even really know about golf there. You can imagine I played all different kind of sports as you do when you’re seven, eight years old and I did a lot of school stuff. We came to Aberdeen because of my dad’s work. One day the golf bug bit me and I just fell in love with the game and I’ve been in love with the game ever since.

That very first shot I hit, I just said ‘Yes’, this is something I really enjoy and this is something I just want to keep doing almost every day.  And as you are a little kid growing up, if you find something you just keep going and you have the energy. I just did it from before school, then when I went to school, and straight after my parents would pick me up and I would practice until it was dark and the next day I would just do the same. It just happened like that.

That first shot? It only went about 40, 50 yards because I was eight years old, but it felt amazing to feel that contact.

I’d definitely say my strengths now would be my long game, especially my driving. I’ve worked very hard and it’s something that each round that goes by I’ll always expect that my driving will be up there. I’m not the longest off the tee but I’m very accurate and it will always set up my game from there.

On the MENA Tour you always have the weather on your side and great golf courses, and great competition so it’s kind of the perfect way, when the weather is bad in the UK and in Europe, that you can come over here and keep your game sharp and use facilities that you might not have in the UK. It’s another path that I can take if Q-School doesn’t go my way.

I was definitely surprised by my win in Ayla and especially that I won by eight strokes. I knew coming into the week that my game was kind of close to hitting a point where it needed to be and, as I said, my driving is one of my strong points and it was very good that week. The wind was quite strong on that first few days and I knew if I could post the score and just keep it going that I could go on with it. I just rode that confidence as much as possible, especially those last five holes. I just really stepped on the gas and just said “Let’s try and win this by as many as possible.”

I know I’m leading the amateur Journey to Jordan race but I’m not really thinking about the spot in the Omega Dubai Desert Classic that goes to the leading amateur at the end of the MENA Tour. I’m just trying to take it tournament by tournament. I’ll be doing [European Tour] Q-School so I’m not sure if I’ll will play enough [to hang on to top spot]. I’m just trying to do the best that I can and if the comes that I do get in, then it’s just a great bonus.

I have a dog at home, Simba. He’s a little pug. I love to spend a lot time with him. He’s turning three, so he’s still small. It’s just something that I’ve always wanted growing up, to have a dog. We didn’t want a big dog, we wanted a small one and I think that it’s amazing how dogs just creep into your life and they creep right into your heart, and we think he’s like my little brother. No, not really, but I enjoy it because it’s definitely nice out there. I remember when my dad would finish work that we’d take Simba out on the course and when there was no one around, we’d let him go and he would run around and we’d play golf, and it’s just nice to have that family environment as well.

I think I was nine years old. I was playing with my dad and it was when I made my first eagle, that’s the best shot I can remember hitting. It was a par 5 at my home club, Peterborough Milton, and I hit driver, three wood and then another three wood. It was a blind shot where you hit over a hill and I hit it and we were looking for the ball for like five minutes and then my dad said ‘let’s check around the green’ and as I went to go pick up the balls next to the hole, my ball was in the hole. We just figured out from there how I made my first eagle.

The post Meet the MENA Tour’s other teen sensation, Robin ‘Tiger’ Williams appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.