After missing his second consecutive Open Championship by a couple shots in final qualifying, Sergio Garcia was pictured signing autographs for a few young fans.
Quite the crowd, perhaps at least a thousand, came out to watch the 44-year-old major champion on Tuesday at West Lancashire in England – and it affected the Spaniard’s play, he admitted.
Garcia shot 3 under after rounds of 71-70, and during his opening round, Garcia was shown on video appearing to argue with someone off camera, shouting, “You’re right, we’re always wrong!”
Sergio Garcia furious at his slow play warning at Final Open Qualifying – saying fans are causing the delays. Here he is taking his anger out at two R&A officials.
“You’re right, we’re always wrong.” pic.twitter.com/hO2mzYgSRa
— Ben Parsons (@_benparsons) July 2, 2024
Bunkered’s Ben Parsons, who was on site, reported that Garcia was unhappy with the lack of crowd control and that his group was put on the clock despite having to often wait for throngs of spectators to clear before hitting tee shots.
Parsons added that the R&A upped the number of marshals for Garcia’s second round to 15.
Garcia told Parsons afterward: “It’s very simple. When you have 2,000 people following us with no ropes, nothing. The marshals were trying to do the best job they could do but obviously we had to stop pretty much on every tee for 2-3 minutes to hit our tee shots because people were walking in front of the tee and on the fairway. Unless we wanted to start hitting people we couldn’t hit. I don’t think they took that into account and that was unfortunate. It made us rush. On a day like today when the conditions are so tricky and you might need a little of bit of extra time here and there it doesn’t help out.
“Because of that I made a couple of bogeys that might cost me getting to Troon.”
Garcia, who carded four of his five bogeys in Round 1, did not end up advancing, though his fellow LIV player, Sam Horsfield, was among four who did.