Jim McCabe

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland - He’s losing his sense of manners as he gets older, it seems.

Eight years ago when he exited the famed Carnoustie Golf Links, Sergio Garcia had the decency to go off to the side and cry on his mother’s shoulder in the aftermath of disappointment.

This time before leaving, he made sure he had a larger audience and wasted valuable time with his juvenile rants about how everything and everyone once again conspired against him.

• The three-shot lead he had squandered?
• The five bogeys he had made, after having made just three over the first 54 holes?
• The wild drives.
• The heroic belly-putter that had turned into a jelly-putter?
• The latest failure to close the deal?

They are the realities drifting in from the shores of the North Sea, where Garcia coughed up the 136^th British Open.

He should know first and foremost, that there’s no shame in that. If he’s looking for a list of guys who’ve done similarly in major championships over the years, here’s a sampling: Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Greg Norman.

There are other names that could be added, but you get the point: Great players sometimes don’t get the job done. But the flip side of that is this: To truly be a great champion, you have to know how to be a great loser.

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All the aforementioned names understood that. In fact, on many occasions Palmer would say that what molded his competitive life weren’t the tournaments he won, but those he lost. He learned how to deal with the pain, learn from it, and become a better person.

The young Spaniard would serve himself well if he spent a little time discussing this matter with Palmer and a lot less time blaming outside forces for his shortcomings.

Look, he’s a marvelous talent, and a world-class ball-striker. He’s charismatic, rich, good-looking, and wildly popular. Great, all of that. But when’s he going to concentrate on dignity and character? Those human qualities would serve him to greater degrees.

Instead of congratulating Padraig Harrington for shooting 4-under 67 in the final round of a major championship on a demanding golf course, Garcia chose to blame the golf gods, or whomever it was who made his tee shot hit the flagstick and carom 20 feet wide left at the second playoff hole.

”It’s funny how some guys hit the pin and go to a foot. Mine hits the pin and goes 20 feet away,” said Garcia.

Ah, Sergio, had your shot not hit the flagstick, who’s to say your ball wouldn’t have gone 20 feet beyond the hole? Or 25? Or even further?

He could have thought that way, but that would require a touch of humility, which he currently is without. So, he never really sat in front of reporters and tried to explain the three bogeys in a four-hole stretch late in his back nine that let players back in. He didn’t explain how he failed to birdie the par-5 sixth, which at the time would have pushed him to 11-under and into a four-shot lead.

And when he talked of how he didn’t “miss a shot in the playoff and [still] shot 1-over,” was he overlooking what turned about to be the key shot?  The approach into the first playoff hole, the par-4 first? The one that didn’t just come to rest in bunker, but on the upslope of a steep-faced bunker? That was not a good shot, not after Harrington had delivered his shot to 12 feet. At that moment, Garcia needed at all costs to get his ball on the green and he didn’t do it.

He didn’t bother telling us about that.

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