There are ways to win and ways to lose. Sergio García ends the second day of the Masters with a terrifying sequence: bogey, bogey, bogey and double bogey in the last four holes, five up in that small stretch and outside the cut with +7 for the fifth time in six editions since he was crowned with the green jacket in 2017, his first and only major. El Niño slams the door and disappears without going through the press area. Already the day before he had once again blamed Augusta for some failures, another chapter in that love-hate relationship that he maintains with this field. Here he swore that he would never reach the top of the Grand Slam, but also here he touched the sky and named his daughter Azalea after one of the holes at Augusta National. This time he twisted his nose again. The man from Castellón is 44 years old, he has not celebrated a title since October 2020 and in the Saudi League he has lost three tiebreakers for victory, the last one a week ago in Miami.
Jose María Olazabal ends the second day of the Masters happy as if he were a debutant. The double champion (1994 and 1999) is enlisting for the 35th time in his career at Augusta at age 58. When he delivers a +6 card in the accumulator, he is out of the cut, but proud. “I enjoyed it,” he says, “I leave with my head held high.” But no, he is not leaving, because the results of a day hit by the gale put him in the weekend, the first time he has overcome the barrier since 2014. Figures like Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Wyndham Clark and Viktor are left out Hovland, but there the one from Hondarribia, the oldest among the survivors, resists. He is the other side of understanding a result, the value of someone who is called the gentleman of golf, a Princess of Asturias Sports Award winner and a dearly loved and highly respected man both on the European and American circuits.
“I didn’t expect to make the cut. I was at home when I found out, calm. I had the TV on, I went to stretch and then to the kitchen, that’s when I found out,” he explained this Saturday after a round of +3 for +9 in total. After the Masters he will head to the senior circuit, where he extends his eternal legacy.
Augusta Masters classification.
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