Why Sergio is blowing hot again

Garcia's clouds have lifted. John Carlin finds fun is back on the fairways

"Everybody was thinking, well, you've got to change your swing, you are done, you are over, you'd better retire... I don't know what is going on. All of a sudden it looks like I am the best player in the world. This is crazy. But it is the way it is."

That was Sergio Garcia raging at life's vagaries after winning the Buick Classic on 25 June, his second Tour victory in the United States in a month. The 21-year-old Spaniard was right. The gulf between the admiration he elicits today, when he stands among the favourites to win this week's Open, and the pity – almost – that he was provoking 12 months ago; the ups and downs he has had since exploding into the world of golf like a meteorite half way through 1999; the game of golf itself (as everyone who has played it would testify, from James VI of Scotland onwards): it's all crazy. But that's the way it is.

From being the revelation of the sporting world in 1999 (among other things, at the age of 19 he was the best player in the European Ryder Cup team), Garcia slid into virtual anonymity during the course of the year 2000. Had it not been for his tendency from time to time take off his shoe mid-round and kick it in the general direction of a course official, he might have generated the same sort of attention as Fred Funk, or one of the many other sad cases on the United States Tour who will never win a Major and must try to make do with an income of $700,000-800,000 a year.

So far in 2001 Garcia has won $2,191,740 on the PGA Tour and another $200,000 or so elsewhere. He is sixth in the PGA rankings but suddenly second, in the view of many in the golfing world, behind Tiger Woods. Once again golf experts all over, but especially in the United States, have enthusiastically embraced the idea that the only player capable of stopping Tiger, of spoiling his dream of world domination, is the man they no longer call El Niño.

This time last year no one gave Garcia the remotest chance of winning The Open at St Andrews. As no one doubted that Tiger, four years older than Garcia, would devour the Old Course. And that was exactly how things turned out. Garcia did not play so badly. His drives and his approach shots were as sound as those of most players. It was just that the putts did not go in. Whereas Woods kept rolling them in.

What has happened now, in the last month (but a month is a long time in golf), is that Woods' short game has deserted him while Garcia's has come back with a vengeance. Suddenly, it sounds far from fanciful to say that Garcia will do at 21 what his legendary compatriot Severiano Ballesteros did at Royal Lytham at 22: win his first major. In Ballesteros's case it was the first of five.

One could even argue that Garcia could do more. Garcia, who started playing golf at three and was his club champion aged 12, is a natural, like Ballesteros. No one is capable of playing the impossible shots better than he. He is also, like Ballesteros, a born winner, hungry for glory. He has the mettle of a champion. But he has one quality Ballesteros always lacked. He is not, as his boisterous personality might suggest, wild off the tee. He is not even erratic. He is, in fact, an excellent driver of the ball.

Anyone who doubts it should talk to Scott Hoch, an old pro – old enough to be Garcia's father – who came second to the young Spaniard in the Buick Classic, having played with him in the final round.

"Sergio hits it much better than Seve did," Hoch said. "He is the exact opposite of Seve. I'd say Sergio is as good a driver of the ball as Greg Norman was in his prime. Tiger is very good with the driver, but I don't think he is as accurate as Sergio. Sergio hits a driver in a lot of situations where Tiger would hit irons. He is a tremendous driver of the ball, and he's got a really good touch, too, whether it be chipping or putting. He hits his irons good too. I'm trying to figure out how I finished only three shots behind him."

And Garcia is also mentally strong these days, as Hoch might well have added after hounding him without success in that last round at the Buick. The year before, in dramatic contrast, Garcia had led by three shots with eight holes to go in the same tournament, and he came third. And that was as well as he did in 2000.

Why did he not live up to the enormous expectations he generated in year one of his professional career? Impossible to say in a game as enigmatic, as mental, as golf. But it could be something to do with the second-year blues, a sort of jinx, pressure induced, that seems to descend on golfers, and other sportsmen, who have started off with a bang. Whatever that thing was in his head inhibiting him from unleashing the full force of his talent, it seems, for now, to have gone.

And the greater maturity and wisdom that has come inevitably with time, has not dampened the freshness of his spirit. As Woods graciously acknowledged last month of a young man he secretly must fear: "Sergio is playing great, and he's fun to watch."

It is that fun that will attract the crowds in droves to follow Garcia around Royal Lytham this week. It was that fun that charmed Tom Lehman, the winner of the last Open at Royal Lytham in 1996. Lehman, Baloo the Bear to Sergio's Mowgli, came across the young prodigy during that Open, and was duly stunned by the promise that he showed. At all of 16 years of age.

After Lehman won, the claret jug still in his hands, he saw the skinny young lad, went up to him, handed him the venerable old trophy and said: "Here, you'd better have a go at holding this, because you're going to be winning it yourself soon." For the sake of professional golf generally, for European golf in particular, and for the cause, simply, of fun, it would be a fine thing if "soon" were to be this coming week.