Sergio and The Masters
It was really quite a thrill to watch Sergio Garcia finally win a major.
Sharing the same couch with my son Gabriel, it was very emotional for me as I have a special affinity for Sergio.
I was playing a lot in Spain when he was a young teenager and all I could hear then was how great a player he was going to be and how we would one day follow in the footsteps of Jose Maria Olazabal and the late great Severiano Ballesteros.
Sergio was supposed to be the one to have put up a challenge to Tiger Woods but it never materialized and in my opinion, this was due to his putting woes.
It was painful and heart breaking to watch him struggle on the greens as I have gone thorough similar experiences in my own amateur career.
However, he is now using his own version of the “claw” as we have witnessed when he won his first major, The Masters.
I have observed that most top professional golfers have revamped their putting styles as their nerves sometimes are not able to hold up to the pressure on the tour.
And most of them seem to have now moved to their personal version of the “claw,” which was unheard of in the ’90s.
(The Claw is a putting style that appears to inhibit the movement/interference of one’s wrist while putting.)
We now have a greater percentage of top golfers who have moved away from the normal putting styles and have gone to either “reverse” or “claw.”
(Reverse is a putting style wherein one’s hands grips the club in a reverse manner, i.e., left hand below the right for right handed golfers and the right hand below the left for left handed golfers.)
Putting woes have stalled many golfing careers and it is fine to see how creative golfers in general have had to be in order to overcome this.
Sergio is a clear example of what I am talking about.
His imagination, like the late Seve, has always been a marvel to watch and it is now serving him well as he has managed to find his own way of overcoming the once weakest part of his game.
It also helps that he now has beside him his fiancé Angela, who understands the ups and downs of a golfing career as she once played college golf for University of Texas.
The needed ingredients seem to be coming together for Sergio.
And because of this I hope to see his name up on the leader boards in the years to come.
