As he did in Saudi Arabia, Sergio Garcia had something of a meltdown after some bad shots. This time the Spaniard got heated during the quarter-finals of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.
Garcia was playing against Matt Kuchar and missed a putt to win the 7th hole to even things up.
A visibly angry Garcia then went to tap-in from less than a foot before Kuchar could concede. He missed, which gave Kuchar a 2-up lead.
Garcia was ready to explode, assuming Kuchar hadn’t conceded from inches.
“I screwed it up, it’s as simple as that,” Garcia said after the match. “Obviously I missed my putt and I kind of tapped it with the back of my putter before he said anything.
“Yeah, it’s a loss of hole. I understand that. The only issue that it was, was that Kooch was like, I didn’t see it good, but I don’t want to take the hole. I don’t want to do this like this.”
Since PGA TOUR officials would not allow Kuchar to concede after the fact, the 2-up score remained, and so the Spaniard asked Kuchar to forfeit a hole, but the American wasn’t interested in that idea.
Matt Kuchar did not have a chance to concede Sergio Garcia's second putt.
Therefore, Garcia lost the hole.
Kuchar told the official he wanted to give Garcia the putt, but that cannot be done retroactively. pic.twitter.com/AJFF8N5J7h
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 30, 2019
“So I was like OK, it’s fine, what do you want to do? Because there are many options that you can do if you don’t want to take the hole, even though I’ve already lost that hole,” said Garcia.
“But obviously he didn’t like any of the options that were there. It’s fine. At the end of the day, I’m the one that made the mistake.”
Garcia made a comeback with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 15 and 16 to close the gap, but Kuchar closed it out with a win on the 18th to win 2-up.
