THE DAYS THAT SHAPED 2007 - LET'S GO SEE SERGIO!!

by WCT, The Ship of Fools

Over the next four days or so, you will be inundated with cheesy, clichéd drivel from all corners of the sports media, disguised as the "2007 year in review." Well, I'm out of post ideas for the year, so I'm going to join the fray. For the next couple weeks I will bring you one blogger's opinion of The Days that Shaped 2007! The events that were so ludicrous, so stupid, and so utterly inexplicable they made me thank God I had a sports blog as an outlet to make fun of them.

Today's installment: Another choke at the British Open.

Sergio Garcia has a reputation for being a douchebag, even by golfer's standards. He is notorious for taking forever when standing over a shot. He calls out Tiger Woods and the rest of the American Ryder Cup team for no reason. And when things don't go his way he, for reasons known only to him, he spits into the cup. All of this, along with a generally smug disposition, makes him a pretty unlikable dude. Thats what makes days like July 22nd so satisfying.

If you are even a casual follower of pro golf, then I'm sure you know that Mr. Garcia has never won a major championship. Calling him "the best player never to win a major," is one way to look at things, another would be to simply say that he simply chokes away major wins when they are within his grasp. Case and point: the 2007 British Open.

Garcia held the lead going into the final round, then proceeded to (of course) shoot his worst round of the tournament. But even after gripping all day, choking on hole after hole, Garcia held the lead going into the fianl hole. Despite his best efforts to choke that lead away (he went into the bunker on his approach shot) Garcia still held a one-shot lead with a 10-foot putt to win the tournament. Predictably, he missed that putt, forcing a playoff, and even more predictably, he bogeyed the first hole of the playoff and eventually lost by a stroke to Paddy Harrington.

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Sergio Garcia choking in Majors. And if Garcia wasn't such an insufferable dick, then people like me wouldn't take so much pleasure in watching him choke. As I have outlined before, schadenfreude might as well be my middle name, and when the person you're cheering against is top-drawer douchebag like Sergio, that haterade tastes even sweeter. See you at The Masters in April Serge!