Sergio Garcia showed us something at the British Open - finally

Going into the British Open this year, I would have said that Sergio Garcia would never win a major golf tournament in his career. He was just that overrated. It was as irrefutable a fact to me as gravity.

Now I say this: He will win a major.

Why the change in heart, especially following yet another monumental Garcia choke?

It was something, easy to overlook, that Nick Faldo said on the eve of the tournament. Asked why Europeans are able to perform so magnificently during Ryder Cups, but not during major golf championships, Faldo said it had to do with putting themselves in a position to gain valuable major experience. That experience, more or less, means contending…and losing.

“I first believed I could win the British Open in 1978 when I ran – I finished four shots back, and I walked away then thinking, wow, I can win. I rebuilt my golf swing and I got there nine years later. And I led at Birkdale, blew up and learned from the experience.

“What I’ve been talking about is that players have got to get in there and really feel the experience of it, and that’s leading at the end of the day, not just so much on the golf course, because you’re a duck on a pond, you’re quite happy. It’s going home, coming to the media, sleeping on a lead, first tee off is 3:15 on the weekend, you’ve got all the time to think about it. I really feel that is a major part of the mental side of this game. You’ve got to experience to know how different you react and what different emotional state it creates in you.”

Some of this might seem rather wishy-washy, but there’s a lot of truth to Faldo’s words: He was easily the best player in his generation, but people often forget that he was known as quite the choke artist long before he broke through, someone quite capable of collecting trophies on the European Tour, but someone who could never close the deal at a major championship – until he won six of them.

Say what you will about Garcia – and I for one have not minced words about him - this was the first major he should have won. You can point to ’99 and the PGA Championship. You can point to the a few other majors where he was in solid contention but not able to mount a charge. But this really was the one that got away.

Those who will point out that he was in the final pairing with Tiger Woods last year and failed to challenge forget what is probably the most irrefutable fact in golf: Woods does not lose a lead on Sunday (the converse of this rule, as we saw this weekend of course, is that Woods does not charge on Sundays either).

For 54 holes in this golf tournament, Garcia was the best player out there. He was solid, he took opportunities to extend his lead, and – this was Faldo’s point about experience – he came back the next few days and did more of the same. He slept for a few nights on that lead.

Did he choke? Of course, though it was a more gradual unraveling than what we’ve seen from him in the past. But unlike his other near-misses – and I think I’ve made clear that he really hasn’t had any near-misses in majors – this was Garcia playing at a different level, and he’s going to remember it. This was one he could really taste. Put aside his asinine excuses – “The Golf Gods are just against me” – and his childish wining about never getting any breaks, his blaming of the kid raking the bunkers on 18; Garcia will not forget anything from this weekend: not what went right, and certainly not what went horribly wrong.

I said going into the weekend that Garcia needed to show us something. I think, perhaps for the first time in his career, that he did. Whether Garcia is destined to be one of the greats – something I doubt – will only be clear after he wins that first major. But he will get at least that…someday. Where he goes from there is anybody’s guess.