You would have thought Sergio Garcia was the next Elvis the way crowds responded to him at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago. The smile, the daring, the vigor, and only 19 — men exchanged high-fives, women swooned, and kids, well, kids adored him most of all. "It looks like they love me," a grinning Garcia said after narrowly missing birdie putts on 17 and 18 and finishing second to Tiger Woods.
Fans had been waiting for Garcia to win a major since he was 16, when Tom Lehman handed him the Claret Jug at the 1996 British Open and said, "You're going to hold this someday." Only Woods was so celebrated so young as Garcia, who played in 28 professional events as an amateur, and whose boyhood home in Castellon, Spain, was strewn with so many gleaming trophies that Jerry Higginbotham, one of Garcia's early caddies, wondered upon visiting: Where do I sit?
Alas, like any love affair, the ensuing years have tested both sides. Garcia cooled off immediately after Medinah, going winless in 2000, which created such alarm that Robert Erb, a vice president at TaylorMade-Adidas, was moved to defend the company's young star. "I'm used to seeing athletes have up years and down years," Erb said. "Sergio will come through fine."
The public, however, couldn't help but turn its wandering eye to Woods, who did nothing but win while Garcia displayed the petulance of a jilted ex, once kicking the ground in anger at a match-play event only to lose his shoe, which narrowly missed an official's head. He found it easiest to blame anyone or anything other than himself.
The excuses started when he was asked about his failure to birdie Medinah's 17th and replied, "No, I hit a good putt, but the problem is the ball — I think it bounced." When Woods won the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, Garcia indelicately suggested Woods received preferential tee times.
No one likes a sore loser, but Garcia's popularity bottomed out on Long Island because of something else: the interminable twitching and regripping in his pre-shot routine. New Yorkers gave him hell for it, and Garcia responded with defiant scowls and his middle finger. In three short years he had descended from toast of the Tour to Public Enemy No. 1.
Garcia, now 27, denies that his popularity has waned. "I wouldn't say that [the fans have given up on me]," he said at the Nissan Open in February. "But the American crowd is always going to cheer harder for an American as opposed to a European, and in Europe it's the other way. But it's just a way of life, the way it should be." Still, there is no denying he has not lived up to his fans' expectations. He has come nowhere near his stated goal upon turning pro to be the No. 1 player in the world, or of winning the money titles on the European and PGA tours in the same year, as he boldly discussed in 2002. He has eliminated the endless waggles, but just once every two years, at the Ryder Cup (where his career record is 14-4-2), does he outshine his American nemesis, Woods.
Which begs the question: Can Garcia thrive without fan support?
"What you're describing is called 'social facilitation' or 'audience effect,'" says John F. Murray, a Palm Beach, Fla., sports psychologist who works with tennis players. "It was the subject of the first study ever done in the field, by [Norman] Triplett, who looked at audience effect on cycling speed, and it's been replicated many times."
Audience effect explains home-field advantage and why Vince Spadea, a mid-level pro and Murray client, regularly makes the semifinals of the ATP event in his hometown of Delray Beach, Fla., despite only occasionally excelling in other tournaments. "Vince has got a little flair to him,"Murray says. "He loves to hear his name shouted out."
){kind=link}