After finishing tied for ninth at -10 at the LIV Golf Invitational Boston over Labor Day weekend, Sergio Garcia arrived at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in England last week looking to compete for the top spot on the leaderboard and boost his Official World Golf Ranking up from No. 77.
Garcia — who defected from the PGA Tour, quit the DP World Tour (formerly known as the European Tour) and removed himself from future Ryder Cups as a player, vice-captain or captain — shot a 4-over 76 on Thursday during his opening round. With the second round on Friday postponed a day after the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the tournament reduced to 54 holes, Garcia’s next chance to get back on the course should have come on Saturday. However, when the second round teed off on Saturday, Garcia was announced as having withdrawn from the BMW PGA Championship and no reason was given for his absence.
Later that day, it quickly became clear that Garcia, who has appeared at the BMW PGA Championship just twice in the last 22 years and also quit after one round in 2014, had departed the DP World Tour’s flagship event so he could watch the Alabama Crimson Tide take on the Texas Longhorns in Austin and hang out with his buddy Scottie Scheffler while he received the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year award on ESPN’s College GameDay. Scheffler is a Longhorn alum as is Garcia’s wife, Angela Akins Garcia, who played on the University of Texas women’s golf team.
Already not the most popular player, Garcia’s decision to take a spot in the tournament that could have gone to someone else before abandoning after just one round to attend a football game 5,000 miles away is not likely to earn him points with his peers.
“He fooled a lot of people for quite some time, but I think his true colors are now visible in glorious technicolor,” a source who has known Garcia well for his entire career told Golfweek.
Of course, that may not matter very much to the 42-year-old as he is now in a position to make bank with LIV Golf without having to worry about his popularity on the PGA Tour or with fans. “What I’m going to do is support the European Tour and that’s all I can do,” Garcia told Golf Digest before the BMW PGA Championship.
Garcia’s actions sure make it seem like he was substantially more interested in supporting a college football team.
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