His reward came on the first and only hole of the playoff. It might have been the biggest break of Garcia’s career. Goydos hit first as the duo replayed the par-3 17th and his wedge shot caught one of those 30-mph gusts that bedeviled the players all day and splashed into the pond just short of the green.

“It didn’t knock it down, just ballooned it,” Garcia recalled.

“I was just praying that I didn’t get any weird gusts or wind or anything like that, and I knew the shot I wanted to hit ... a good, solid sand wedge,” he said a few moments later. “I was thinking, if I manage to make 3, I’m probably going to — I should win this thing. So that’s what I did.”

For what it’s worth, five golfers who won The Players Championship went on to win their first major afterward, David Duval being the last one and Hal Sutton the only one to win his in the same year. As Garcia acknowledged afterward, and knows only too well from experience, Woods isn’t likely to crack the door for him the way Goydos did.

But after all those stops and starts that cluttered his past, Garcia finally sounded ready in an interview with The Golf Channel to do that for himself.

“I don’t want to be cocky or anything, but when I’m feeling good, I don’t think anybody else can hit the ball much better than me, not even Tiger Woods, who’s an unbelievable player. I feel on that part of the game, I can still manage to beat him at that.

“Unfortunately, his short game is still better than mine and that’s what I have to keep working on. If I keep doing that and believing in myself,” he added, “I can at least make it difficult for him.”

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