AUGUSTA, Ga. (PA) -- For Sergio Garcia, the Masters becomes even more important after what happened at the Players Championship.
Brilliantly though Stephen Ames played to take the Sawgrass title by six shots over Retief Goosen, his task became a lot easier when Garcia -- tied for second with a round to play -- dropped five strokes in the first five holes.
The 26-year-old Spaniard went on to finish only 14th with a 78 -- the fifth time in five PGA Tour events this year that he has been over par in the final round.
"I played pretty, pretty bad," said Garcia afterward. "On Sundays, my good shots seem to be bad and my bad shots are bad. I haven't played the best but I haven't really got any good breaks, and it's taken a bit of momentum out of me.
"It's pretty much been happening every single last round, but what can you do? You're not going to kill yourself; you're just going to keep working on it and hope that one of these years I'll have a good Sunday," he added. "It's a shame, because I haven't been able to put four rounds together. I hope I've just got to wait for it to start going the right way."
Garcia's last three final rounds at Sawgrass have now been 77, 78 and 78 -- his worst three scores since he began his debut in 2000 with an 82.
He has much happier memories of Augusta. Although he missed the halfway cut last year, in 2004 he charged up to fourth place with a closing 66.
The Masters will be Garcia's 27th major as a professional, and his best remains his second place behind Tiger Woods at the 1999 PGA Championship just four months after he left the amateur ranks.
He remains Europe's highest-ranked player at sixth in the world, but the left-hand-low putting method he has employed for his last two tournaments clearly still needs work. And that is not all.
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