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The news appeared in The Telegraph on Sunday. Sergio Garcia made one last attempt to be part of Team Europe. The Spaniard has contacted the DP World Tour, declaring his intention to pay the fines still pending against him, linked to his decision to play on LIV Golf.
Sergio Garcia, results
The total amounts to approximately £700,000, which is well above the £100,000 “base” fine imposed by the DP World Tour on LIV players pursuant to the decision taken by the Sports Resolution Arbitration and Media Center last April.
Tour officials rejected Garcia’s proposal, arguing that paying the fines would not remove the main impediment to participation in the Ryder Cup, namely the Spaniard’s resignation from the DP World Tour, presented in early May.
As part of the framework agreement between the Tours, the possibility of submitting a new association request by the resigning parties, both from the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, is foreseen for next season. Furthermore, the Spaniard himself had disclosed his telephone conversation with the Captain of Team Europe, who had confirmed to him that there was no possibility that he could be part of the team, in any capacity.
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 make the cut in a European Tour event, 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 became 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 professional in 1999 after winning the title of best amateur at the Augusta Masters, achieving a hcp of +5.4 and an average in official match-play of 32 victories and only one defeat. In his first year as a pro, he immediately made his mark 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 landing on the green and García running and jumping to see the landing.
García has always been one of the strongest players from tee to green, with a very distinctive swing. He is one of the cornerstones 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 for the youngest participant in the tournament (in 1999 edition).
