Sergio Garcia’s ‘gentlemanly’ good-good putt concession backfires; Rickie Fowler comes back to win WGC match

Sergio Garcia, thanks in large part to a head-scratching incident midway through his third-round match with Rickie Fowler, blew a 3-up lead and lost, 1-up, to the flat-billed one Friday at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship.

The 34-year-old Spaniard had the closely shorn California native on the ropes, at 2-up, as both players inspected their upcoming par putts on the seventh green, with Fowler staring down a nearly 18-footer and Garcia short of seven feet for his par-4.

And then the the former El Nino pulled a Sergio that had Golf Channel announcers sputtering and Twitter typists in a tumult -- he went good-good with Fowler for a halve.

Garcia did so, despite the disparity in the distances their balls would have had to cover to dip into the hole and, as Shane Bacon noted, his opponent’s flat-stick woes.

What PGATour.com termed Sergio’s “gentlemanly gesture” sparked a Twitter tempest.

Garcia, who took a while to play a chip to the previous green from near a hive of bees that constituted a danger under the Rules of Golf’s Decision I-4/10 (Dangerous Situation; Rattlesnake or Bees Interfere with Play), told Golf Channel broadcasters as he walked to the eighth tee that he “felt bad” about the time it took to get an official ruling before he took relief and hit his shot.

On the hole in question, after coming up well short with his birdie putt, leaving himself nearly seven feet to get to the hole, and retreating to practice his stroke on No. 7, Garcia turned around and told Fowler, who was inspecting a 17-foot, seven-inch attempt, to pick it up and move on.

“You can’t do that,” Golf Channel analyst Nick Faldo observed. “Come on ... I’m flummoxed.”

As was the Twitter-verse:

As the match wore on, Garcia’s gimme on No. 7 appeared to be more strategic than it first appeared, as he made Fowler putt a shortish one for par and a halve on No. 13. His move backfired, however, as Fowler cut into his lead with two birdies on the next three holes to Garcia’s one and walked to the 11th tee just 1-down.

Sergio proceeded to miss two five-foot putts on 14 and 15 to retain that slim advantage heading to the 210-yard, par-3 16th.

When Fowler’s 6-iron from the tee barely missed a green-side bunker on the left and jumped up to within a few feet, and Garcia lost his 6-iron to the far right side of the putting surface, the game was on -- and essentially over.

Sergio’s long attempt slid by the hole, leaving another tester, but it didn’t matter since Fowler drained his 15-footer to pull even for the first time since the duo met on the first tee.

That’s when Fowler’s adrenaline kicked in as he drove his ball on the par-4 17th some 367 yards -- 40 yards beyond Garcia’s tee shot. With Sergio safely aboard in two, Rickie found the rough above the green, though each missed his birdie effort, Garcia with a putter and Fowler using a putting stroke with a wedge.

Garcia hit a sensational approach from a bad lie in the rough to the green, but it was not enough as Rickie clobbered a 355-yard drive and spun his second shot back to a distance Sergio may have conceded several holes earlier. Facing a must-make from 18 feet above the hole, Garcia pushed it past and watched his week in the Arizona desert come to an end after Fowler eased in his four-footer for the winning birdie.

Garcia, not necessarily known for his graciousness, showed unexpected and uncommon sportsmanship with his post-round explanation of what went down on No. 7.

“I like to be as fair as possible and I thought that on six ... it wasn’t so much the drop, I think it was the time that I took,” he told Golf Channel. “I took a drop first because of the bees, and then I didn’t feel comfortable again so I took an extra drop, so I just felt like maybe I took too much time and that might have made a difference on [Fowler’s] putt, because I know that I would not have enjoyed it myself if I had been him.

“Anything could happen on seven -- he could make it and I could miss it and still lose the hole,” Garcia added. “So I thought it was the only thing I could do, and at least I feel good with myself even though I lost.”

Fowler, for his part, said he did a double-take when Garcia said good-good on the green in question.

“He said, ‘You want to halve?’ and I didn’t know what he meant. I had to ask a couple of times -- I didn’t know if he had a sandwich over there waiting and asked if I wanted to split lunch or something,” Fowler offered. “Obviously I’d be stupid not to take a halve.”

With neither golfer making particularly good lag putts early on, Fowler agreed with Garcia that the situation could have gone either way on No. 7.

“I was fully ready to go make the putt and try and put the pressure on him,” he said, “and then he goes and wins the next hole and I’m three down, so I had my work cut out for me.”

His birdie putt before the turn was the big momentum changer, Fowler averred.

“I knew on nine it was a bit putt and I needed to make birdie,” he said. “It’s a lot easier going into the back nine 2-down versus 3-down.”

Fowler will face Jim Furyk, who bested Harris English, 3&2, in Saturday’s round of eight.