May 11, 2008 - 10:35 PM
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PONTE VEDRA, Florida (Ticker) -- Sergio Garcia became just the second European to win the Players Championship, beating American Paul Goydos on the first hole of a playoff on Sunday.
Twenty-one years after Scotland's Sandy Lyle won in the event's only other playoff, Garcia won it at the very same hole - the famous par-3 17th with its island green at the Sawgrass TPC.
After Goydos found the water with his tee shot, the door was open for Garcia, and the Spaniard was not about to let it shut, punching a wedge to the middle of the green and watching in delight as his ball fed down to the hole, nestling only four feet away.
Waiting until Goydos finished up his double-bogey five, Garcia could celebrate the end of a victory drought of nearly three years, missing the short birdie putt before tapping in for a par.
"Awesome. Great day," Garcia said. "I felt so good all week long with all part of my game. I feel like I was really coming along, and you know, just thrilled to be able to be the Players champ and I'm just going to try to carry it as well as I can."
The 28-year-old Garcia collected $1.71 million for his seventh victory on the United States PGA Tour - and first since the 2005 Booz Allen Classic.
"A lot of hard work is starting to pay off," Garcia said, before joking: "I want to thank Tiger (Woods) for not being here. That always makes it a little bit easier."
Said Goydos: "Sergio played better than everybody. Look at the stats."
Goydos said he approached the playoff hole the same way as he did in regulation - with far different results.
"I hit the same club," he said. "Again, first playoff, my experience told me, it's not time to try to dink a 9-iron. It's time to stick with the shot you hit. I hit a really good shot there on hole 71, and I hit not quite as good a shot on hole 73."
Earlier, Garcia made a clutch par at the final regulation hole to stay alive. The par-4 18th was the toughest hole on the course on an extremely windy day, and Garcia found a poor lie when his tee shot drifted into the right rough.
Garcia only advanced his second shot to within 50 yards of the pin and then pitched to seven feet.
It was a critically important putt and, given his problems on the greens over the past few years, there were few who would have put any money on Garcia making it.
But make it he did, his stroke holding up under pressure.
"Yeah, for a minute, I looked at my caddie and thought I made that third shot; it looked so good coming up the hill," Garcia said. "You know, I've seen that putt before. ... So, the good thing about it was I knew that I was going to make that putt."
Then it was up to Goydos, playing in the group behind. He also found the right rough and bunted his ball down to within 50 yards of the hole.
But with the tournament on the line, Goydos hit a poor pitch, catching it a little fat and coming up 14 feet short.
With Garcia watching from the scoring room, Goydos missed his chance to win it in regulation, his putt drifting to the right.
"What you want is, I had a putt on the last hole to win the tournament," Goydos said. "I don't really think that you could ask for any more than that, other than it being a little shorter."
Garcia shot a closing 71, Goydos 74, and they finished at 5-under 283, one stroke ahead of American Jeff Quinney (70), who bogeyed the last to miss the playoff after his approach shot found the back bunker.
"I pretty much had no shot out of that bunker," Quinney said. "The last thing I wanted to do was leave it in there. I just wanted to give myself a putt."
Apart from a birdie putt that he missed at the 16th hole, Garcia was rock-solid down the stretch.
His putter, a problem for so long, cooperated when it really mattered, the hard work he has put in with short game coach Stan Utley paying off.
"You know, you can be a great ball-striker, but if you can't finish it off," Garcia said. "I mean, you're going to win some tournaments, like I did Byron Nelson where I won without really putting well, but it doesn't happen too often.
"You've just got to work on every single aspect of your game."
