Garcia home in tightly contested Buick Classic
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2004 Buick Classic | Wrap | 14 Jun 2004
Sergio Garcia, if he wasn’t already in that category, has joined the immediate favourites for the US Open with his narrow but impressive win at the Buick Classic. Garcia, who already has a good record at the US Open, showed with his wins here and at the Byron Nelson a month ago, that his game has reached a level that gives him every right to be amongst the top four or five favourites for next week’s event at Shinnecock Hills.
After a slow start in today’s final round when he bogeyed the second and third holes, Garcia birdied seven of the last twelve holes to force a playoff with Rory Sabbatini and Padraig Harrington. Garcia birdied the third playoff hole (Westchester’s par five eighteenth) to take his second Buick Classic title in four years.
Garcia has now not missed a cut in eleven stroke play events this season on the USPGA Tour, highlighting the increasing strength of his game and a level of consistency that the swing changes he has put in place, were targeted to achieve. It augurs well for a showing in next week’s US Open, which may better his fourth place finish in 2002 at Bethpage.
There were many with chances over the closing stages with Garcia, Sabbatini, Harrington, Tom Byrum, Luke Donald, Vijay Singh and Fred Couples all in with a chance with just a few to play. Garcia’s brilliant play over the last nine holes provided an air of inevitability that he would, at worst, be in a playoff. His tee shot into the breeze at the long par three 16th, came to rest some ten feet from the hole and once he had made that then it was a case of needing a good drive at the last to take advantage of the par five. He did just that and produced a magnificent second from 265 yards uphill leaving himself a thirty footer for eagle. He missed that, but was able to make the four footer for birdie and set the mark for those behind. Three players would need to birdie the last to join Garcia in the playoff.
Tom Byrum was the first to try but bowed out with a bogey at the last. Harrington was next to try and when he missed the green left with his second, catching the greenside trap some fifty feet from the hole, Garcia was looking even better. Harrington played a trying bunker shot well, in what were difficult circumstances, but it released and ran off the edge of the green some fifteen feet from the hole and in the first cut of rough. A deliberately bladed and brilliant sand iron execution saw the ball run through the rough onto the fringe and into the hole for Harrington to join Garcia and when Sabbatini holed from ten feet for his birdie ten minutes later, it would be a three way shoot out.
The playoff looked destined to finish at the very first hole when Harrington faced a ten footer to win but it lipped out and so to the 17th where Sabbatini and Garcia parred but Harrington took five. At the 18th hole the second time around Garcia pitched to ten feet and then holed the exact putt that Harrington had been unable to twenty minutes earlier and he was the champion.
In fourth place, two behind the playoff, were Fred Couples, Vijay Singh and Tom Byrum.
Byrum recorded his best finish for more than four years on the PGA Tour and, as a result of his 15th place last year at the US open, he is off to Shinnecock Hills with his game in good shape. For Couples and Singh, they have the knowledge that they too head to Shinnecock Hills in good form. Couples suffered from a bad back most of the week but if he holds up next week he may play a part at the US Open.
The leading Australasians were Scott Hend and Robert Allenby who tied for 14th, with Hend creeping closer to retaining his card for 2005. Craig Parry slipped almost unnoticed into 16th, Stuart Appleby was 23rd, Adam Scott 32nd, Peter Lonard and John Senden 42nd, Stephen Leaney 53rd and Grant Waite 80th.
