For the first time since 1999, Sergio Garcia is out of the Top 100 in the men’s golf world rankings. The effects of his move to LIV Golf, the Arab Super League – whose tournaments currently do not grant points for the OWGR – and the consequent abandonment of traditional tours (PGA Tour and DP World Tour), caused the Spaniard to lose ground, after this week from 99th to 103rd position.
Sergio Garcia, ranking
Major champion “El Nino” was world No. 2 for 18 weeks, No. 3 for 17 weeks and spent 118 in the top five and 353 in the top ten. Not only that: winner of The Masters in 2017, he played the Ryder Cup 10 times becoming the highest scorer in the history of the competition.
Today 42 years old (he will turn 43 on January 9), Garcia will certainly not play the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome. As for the ranking, no changes – this week – as regards the Top 10, with Rory McIlroy remaining at the top of the standings ahead of Scottie Scheffler (second) and Cameron Smith, still third despite his success at the Australian PGA Championship.
Significant leap forward for Dan Bradbury. The Englishman, with his success in South Africa at the Joburg Open (DP World Tour), rose from position number 1,397 to position number 551. He began playing golf at the age of 3 at the “Club de Campo del Mediterráneo”, where his father Victor was a teacher.
At 12 he was already champion of his club, four years later he became the youngest player to pass the cut in an event of the European Tour, in the 1995 Turespaña Open Mediterranea. This record was broken by amateur Jason Hark in the UBS Hong Kong Open .
In the same year Garcìa becomes the youngest player to win the European Amateur Championship. In his amateur career he won everything: from the Topolino World Junior Championship (1994), to the European championship (1995), to the British Amateur (1998).
He turned pro in 1999 after winning the best amateur title at the Augusta Masters, reaching a hcp of +5.4 and an official match-play average of 32 wins and only one loss. In his first year as a pro, he immediately stood out with a spectacular head-to-head with Tiger Woods at the 1999 PGA Championship, where he performed his most famous shot: an intentional slice from behind a tree with the ball going into the green and García running and jumping to see it land.
García has always been one of the strongest tee-to-green players, with a very distinctive swing. He is one of the pillars of the European Ryder Cup team, in which he has 6 victories (2002, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2014, 2018) in 9 participations and has set the record of youngest participant in the tournament (in 1999 edition).
