Saturday, April 11, 2015

Sergio Garcia can’t stop tweeting about Tiger Woods ahead of their Masters date


Here we go again -- Tiger and Sergio find themselves paired up together for a nice four-plus hour stroll at Augusta.


Sergio Garcia is apparently as excited about playing with Tiger Woods in Saturday’s third round of the Masters as the rest of us are to watch the two go at it one more time.


Two years after the duo’s years-long simmering feud exploded all over TPC Sawgrass, the golf goddesses saw fit to reward us all with a Tiger-Sergio redux, and Garcia was all atwitter about the prospect.




For sure, there’s a career’s worth of bad blood between Tweety Bird and the Big Cat, a fact that seemed to be preying on Garcia a few hours before their 1:15 p.m. ET tee time, made possible by their matching 2-under 36-hole scores.




Tiger, on the upcoming golf date: crickets.


So, already, Advantage: Woods.


For those just tuning in, here’s a "previously on" recap of the Tiger-Sergio feud that was ignited back in the late ‘90s, burbled over the years, and reached its inevitable boiling point at the 2013 Players Championship.


1999 - It wasn’t so much Garcia’s unbelievable, eyes-closed recovery shot from the trunk of that tree at the PGA Championship at Medinah, or even the sprinting, leaping, and scissor-kicking up the fairway that first got under Tiger’s notoriously thin skin.



It was more likely the taunting glare Sergio shot his way after drilling a long birdie putt on the 13th hole.



"I did it with good feelings, not hoping he would make a triple bogey or whatever," he said back then. "I was kind of telling him: If you want to win, you have to play well."



Garcia boasting, "I want to play Tiger" in the following month’s Ryder Cup was duly noted by the rising superstar as well.


2000 -- Garcia wildly celebrates his meaningless victory over an exhausted, flu-ridden Woods in Y2K’s made-for-TV Battle at Bighorn exhibition.


2002 -- Garcia whines that officials would have suspended second-round play at the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black if Woods were on the course. Tiger responds by outscoring Sergio 72-74 in a final-round matchup and nabs his second U.S. Open title.


2006 -- Sergio has no one to blame but himself for this one, showing up for the final round of the British Open "scripted" cap to shoes (but for his white belt) in full canary yellow. After roaring to a 67-73 finish, Woods sends this famous text to a friend: "I just bludgeoned Tweety Bird."


Garcia gets one back at that year’s Ryder Cup. After taunting Woods by pointing out that Tiger "doesn't have a great Ryder Cup record," Sergio says he’s "looking forward to hopefully going out there and meeting him two or three times." Teamed up with Luke Donald, Garcia wins, 2-up, over Woods and Jim Furyk.


May 2013 -- Garcia accuses Woods of distracting him as he played a shot during the third round at TPC Sawgrass. He fans the flames during a European Tour dinner when he lamely and insensitively jokes that he would serve Woods fried chicken if the two were to dine together during the upcoming PGA Championship.


Woods is not amused, tweeting that the joke gone bad, which involved a heinous racist stereotype, was "wrong, hurtful and inappropriate," but that it was time to move on.








July 2013 -- Rapprochement at Merion.




September 2013 -- The two play together in the BMW Championship, an uneventful outing in which Tiger prevails, 66-69.


January 2015 -- Sergio concedes the tiff with Tiger messed up his game for months but that "it was a good learning experience" for both parties and "made us even stronger."


Since then, Woods put up the worst numbers of his career at Phoenix, withdrew from Torrey Pines and competitive golf, and then rose from the ashes over the last two days at Augusta. A more mature Garcia has been on display in the interim, with the 35-year-old Spaniard racking up one top-five finish in five tour events in 2015.


While neither player is in the running for a green jacket this week -- unless 36-hole leader Jordan Spieth eases up on the pedal and Woods or Garcia steps on the gas -- it’s still Tiger 14-Sergio 0 in the majors.


Game on, gentlemen. Everybody else:



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