Sergio Garcia has won his first PGA Tour event since the Players Championship in 2008 with a two shot victory over South African Tim Clark at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro in North Carolina. Returning to the Sedgefield Golf Club early on Monday morning to complete the final round of the event, Garcia led by one when play got under way and although he took some time to secure the second birdie of his round at the 1th hole, by the time he reached the 18th tee he led by four over Clark and rookie Bud Cauley. Garcia would bogey the last while Clark, who was playing in the group ahead, birdied the final hole and the margin was two. Cauley finished on his own in third position, securing his biggest cheque in his fledgling career, one shot ahead of Chad Campbell, Carl Pettersson and Jimmy Walker. Not only did Garcia win but he put to bed any concerns, if indeed there were any, of his place on the European Ryder Cup team. It was nice to pull through, said Garcia. “I was happy to go out there and hit some very good shots, made some nice four, five footers when I had to and, you know, kind of gave myself a good cushion going into the last. So, you know, very happy about the way the week has gone and looking forward to the next couple weeks. Garcia talked about having a new caddie on the bag whose role it was to just carry the bag and not get involved in decision making. He had engaged the caddie early in the week. It helped me you know, sometimes I feel like caddies are great but sometimes I feel like I depend too much on them, it s the way I am and sometimes I would instead of making a decision myself I would wait for the caddy to make a decision for me and then maybe I don t feel comfortable with that and still trying to do it. So, for me what I wanted, you know, was to start making decisions for myself, right and wrong. Don t give me wrong, not all my decisions were good this week. Obviously misread some putts. I hit a couple wrong clubs here and there. So, you know, probably going to keep doing it maybe until the end of the year and kind of work with myself and my own confidence and then at the end of the year I ll probably try to get a new caddie and see where we go from there. While Garcia has not won on the PGA Tour in four years he did win twice in Europe last year and is perhaps disappointed that those wins have been overlooked by many. I think that a lot of the things that I did last year really helped a lot. Like I said before, you know, the way I played the U.S. Open and then the way I played in Germany to get myself into the British Open, the way I finished the year in Europe and, you know, at the end of the day for me, I m the one sometimes it hurts to hear people not giving enough credit to some of those wins because they re in Europe. Fortunately, I know how much they mean to me and I know how difficult they are so, you know, they were great and they really helped a lot. They helped me get keeping better and, you know, it s just a matter of kind of keep working on it, keep a good attitude on it and, you know, good times and bad times. Clark was another back in contention after a long time battling injury issues and he was delighted. This does a lot for me, said Clark. Having missed a whole year and finally get myself in contention in tournaments means a lot to me. Yeah, mine probably means more than people realize. It’s a tough game and I fought hard this year and just glad to be back. Rod Pampling led the Australians when he finished 28th and very importantly completed the task of securing his place in the opening event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs next week in New York. Click for LIVE SCORES
Author: Bruce Young / iseekgolf.com