July21 Garcia

It’s D-Day for Sergio Garcia. It’s about time the Spaniard stepped up to the majors plate and with a handy two-shot lead at the halfway mark, he has a great chance to do just that.

And he got off to the perfect start, opening his account with a birdie three and following up with a solid par at the 2nd. To keep track on Sergio and the rest of the field’s 3rd round progress check out our running commentary…

Garcia is getting ready for a critical 3rd round which could make-or-break his Open hopes. He knows deep down that all eyes will be on him to see if he can maintain his superb form…or disappear into obscurity.

There’s no doubt the pressure is mounting on Garcia to finally deliver the majors goods. He’s had 11 years of trying to win one – his first attempt was a talented teenager at Lytham in 1996 (he qualified as European Open Amateur champion) – but without any success despite pushing Tiger Woods all the way to the US PGA Championship a few years back.

It will be far from easy for Garcia who is likely to combat tougher conditions when he tees it up but at least his new belly putter seems to be working well and it will need to if he is to go into Sunday in front.

Winning his first major would mean so much to Garcia and he insists: “I’m trying, I can tell you that. I’m trying to win as many majors as I can, to give myself a good chance of being in contention. That’s all I can do.

“Last year I managed to shoot -23 in the last two majors and didn’t win. What can you do? Sometimes you have got to give it up for the guy who does it. Sometimes you play well and you still don’t win and sometims you may be don’t play so well yet manage to win.”

Garcia revealed he’d loved to tee it up with Tigr inn tomorrow’s final group, saying: “That would be fun but we’ll see. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

And he’s right there: there’s still a long, long way to go and Garcia knows if he doesn’t turn up with his A game again he could still be shedding more Carnoustie tears.