Garcia enjoying mentoring young Fireballs team

HONG KONG – Just over a month from now, Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia will drive down Magnolia Lane and check in at the Augusta National clubhouse. It will be his 26th Masters start – and perhaps more noteworthy, his 100th career start in a major.

It will also be the first of two guaranteed starts in this year’s majors for Garcia, who won the Masters in 2017 during a stretch in which he played in 84 consecutive majors, his streak ending only when he tested positive for Covid in 2020. Otherwise, it would have extended to 96 in a row.

As a past champion, Garcia will always have a spot in the Masters. Otherwise, he’ll need to either go through qualification or receive a special invite to play the other majors, which the PGA of America extended to him for this year’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.

Having turned 45 in early February, Garcia has reached an age that comes with a low percentage of odds for winning majors. In the last 38 years, his fellow LIV Golf captain, Phil Mickelson of HyFlyers GC, is the only player over 45 to win a men’s major. And yet given Garcia’s excellent form in the last 12 months – his first LIV Golf individual title in Andalucía and his third-place finish in the season-long Individual Championship race in 2024, along with encouraging results to start this season – the Spanish star believes major win No. 2 remains within reach.

“If I have one of those weeks where I’m feeling comfortable and things kind of go my way and everything snowballs in the right direction, yes, for sure,” Garcia said. “It’s just a matter of trying to get myself in as many (majors) as possible. Obviously, if you have three or four chances a year, the odds are a little bit better than if you’re just playing one or two.

“But I feel like my game is still in great shape. Yeah, I could definitely have a chance.”

Garcia enters this week’s LIV Golf Hong Kong ranked 15th in points after his T6 finish in Riyadh followed by a T18 in Adelaide. It’s a solid start individually, but even more impressive is that his Fireballs already have celebrated a team victory by winning in Adelaide.

That win was the team’s fifth all-time. More noteworthy, the Fireballs have now won at least one tournament in each of LIV Golf’s first four seasons. No other team has won tournaments in more than two different seasons.

“Obviously super-proud to be able to achieve that,” Garcia said in the aftermath of the Adelaide victory. “It’s something that’s not easy. A lot of great teams, and every year they seem to get stronger and stronger. But we do, too.”

It’s a testament to Garcia’s abilities as a captain, specifically in building a camaraderie among his Spanish-speaking lineup.

In Adelaide, they rented a house by the beach, hired a dedicated local chef to cook meals, played poker, went on a team outing in which they swam with dolphins … and then rallied on the final day with a team total of 12 under (best of the day) to shoot 21 under and win by six strokes. Garcia and David Puig led with the way with 5-under 67s.

Individually, Abraham Ancer led with five holes to play before suffering some late bogeys to tie for second. Although disappointed not to convert the opportunity into victory, Ancer can consider it a momentum-booster going into this week’s title defense at LIV Golf Hong Kong. “Feel like my game is trending in the right direction,” said Ancer, who recently turned 34. “I like where things are headed. … It was a great week. We had a lot of fun outside of the golf course.”

That last statement made Garcia glow.

“The atmosphere within the team is just amazing,” Garcia said. “The fun we have, the quality of guys that I have on my team – not only as players but as people, as human beings – it’s unbelievable. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of.”

Another thing to be proud of is Garcia’s mentorship of his younger teammates. One of his objectives since becoming a LIV Golf captain is helping young Spanish players navigate the growing pains of a young professional golfer.

During the inaugural 2022 season, Eugenio Chacarra left Oklahoma State to turn pro and join Garcia’s Fireballs. His first start was in Portland, and in his fifth start in Bangkok, Chacarra won the individual title while the Fireballs won their first team trophy.

Chacarra remained on the roster for two more seasons and was joined last year by Puig after the Fireballs acquired him during the offseason. Puig, who was still an amateur when he started as an original Fireballs member at the first LIV Golf tournament in London, was just 22 when he joined the team full-time after spending the 2023 season with Torque GC.

This year, 22-year-old Luis Masaveu signed with the Fireballs just months after turning pro. In replacing Chacarra on the roster, Masaveu actually makes the team even younger – and with Puig still just 23, the Fireballs have the league’s second youngest set of players next to Legion XIII’s Caleb Surratt (20) and Tom McKibbin (22), who just happened to be captained by LIV Golf’s other Spanish superstar, Jon Rahm.

Asked about his focus on working with young players, Garcia replied: “Anywhere in golf it's important, but for us and for me in particular, for Fireballs, I want to be the old guy at all times. I enjoy the challenge of being their mentor and helping them out and hopefully getting their careers started.

“That's always my goal, to try to have a young team, and obviously then it might develop. You might have a guy that is 22 and he's here for seven or eight years, and then he’s older. I’ll always try to bring a young guy here and there and help him out and help him develop a little bit.”

While Puig already has shown he can succeed outside LIV Golf – he’s won two Asian Tour events and has top-five finishes in four of his last five DP World Tour starts – he now appears to be ready to contend on his primary league. He enters Hong Kong ranked fourth in the points race after a T6 in Riyadh and a solo fourth in Adelaide.

Masaveu is still in the adjustment phase, but his future looks tremendous after a stellar amateur career. No doubt he’ll benefit by working with Garcia, who knows a thing or two about being a hotshot youngster, having catapulted on the scene as a 19-year-old in 1999 when he was runner-up to Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship.

“I’ve been watching him since I was a kid, him winning the Masters, all those Ryder Cups,” Masaveu said. “It’s just incredible. I’m really, really happy to be here. I’m just going to try to learn the most I can from him.”

While on the back-nine of a career that merits Hall of Fame consideration – now that he’s 45, he’s met all the criteria for eligibility – Garcia still has plenty to achieve.

Perhaps a win this week in Hong Kong; he’s won tournaments in 17 countries but never under the Hong Kong flag. A title defense later this year at his favorite course, Valderrama. Major opportunities, and possibly another Ryder Cup appearance. Season-long LIV Golf championships, both individually and for his Fireballs team. And the responsibility that comes with teammates who are striving to emulate his career.

“I’m not getting any younger,” Garcia said, “but I feel like I'm still in good shape. I'm healthy. I still have a great drive to play and improve and get better.”

He may call himself the old guy on the team, but ageless seems a more apt description for Garcia these days.