McIlroy and Garcia

This is the week of the Players Championship on the PGA Tour. The tournament has often been called the ‘Fifth Major’ and that has caused many journalists, especially in Europe, to cringe, but there is no denying it is a massive date on any player’s schedule. The prize money is huge, and it always manages to attract a quality field.

It’s no different this year. All the top stars — including each of the top-20 ranked players in the world — are at TPC Sawgrass ready to take on the famous Pete Dye-designed golf course. However, I will keenly follow the exploits of two of them.

That’s world No. 2 Rory McIlroy and the reigning Masters champion Sergio Garcia.

Obviously, world No. 1 Dustin Johnson remains the form man, having finished second last week at the Wells Fargo Championship in what was his first competitive outing following the unfortunate accident at Augusta that put him out of the Masters.

The kind of consistency that Dustin is showing is what golfers dream of, having won thrice and finished inside the top-six seven times in his eight starts in 2017. However, he does not have a very good record at TPC Sawgrass. He has never finished inside the top-20 there in his career, but all that could change this year.

That’s because his confidence must be at its all-time high, and also because he is a very smart golfer, who has realised that every golf course in the world cannot be tamed with brute force alone. He will surely have formulated a different gameplan for the course this year.

But as I said, Rory and Sergio will be huge storylines in Florida. Both are playing their first event after almost five weeks of a break following the Masters, and both have undergone life-changing experiences.

Let’s talk about Rory. The man is in a fantastic place right now. The small and unnecessary controversies notwithstanding — like the criticism of extreme privacy during his marriage last month — his life off the course is really peaceful, and that is going to show on the golf course.

The spotlight on him will be harsher because of the recent equipment deal he has signed with TaylorMade. How he does with his new clubs and balls will be a matter of intense examination. But I have a feeling that it is not going to be anything close to the Nike switch he made in 2013. And like Dustin, Rory too did not have the best of starts at TPC Sawgrass, but over the past three years, he has shown that he has figured out the golf course.

And then there is Sergio. Now he is one with a fantastic record on the golf course, having won the tournament in 2008, and finishing second on two other occasions. Sawgrass is a shot-maker’s delight and there are very few players in the world who are better ball-strikers than the Spaniard when he is on song.

My only worry with Sergio is that he might lack a bit of intensity after such a mammoth victory, and the fact that he has not played any tournament in the past five weeks. On the other hand, perhaps he is just chomping at the bit to get back on the golf course and is completely prepared to carry on from where he left at Augusta National. I hope latter is the case.

— Jeev Milkha Singh is a four-time champion on the European Tour

source: GULF NEWS