Sergio García, currently number 10 in the World Ranking, returns to the Open de España and the RCG El Prat where he made his debut as a professional player on Thursday, April 22, 1999, at that time at the former facilities of the famous Barcelona club located in El Prat de Llobregat.
His presence is an enormous incentive for the development of this tournament integrated within the European Professional Circuit, which will take place at the RCG El Prat, between May 14 and 17, with the main sponsorship of Reale Seguros.
Considered one of the best players in the world today, of course number 1 in the National Order of Merit and with a career backed by numerous important triumphs throughout his professional career, Sergio García has a victory in the Open de España, specifically the one achieved in the 2002 edition held in the Gran Canarian course of El Cortijo.
“In El Prat I feel like in my second home. They always treat us wonderfully and I am lucky to be an honorary member, apart from keeping that special memory of playing there, in 1999, my first Spanish Open. You never forget that”, said the player from Castellón a few days before the start of the competition.
Sergio García repeats his presence in the Open de España after his performances in the 2013 El Saler and 2014 PGA Catalunya Resort editions, where he finished, respectively, in twelfth and thirty-eighth place, breaking a streak of absences that had lasted since 2003. In his eleven participations -three of them as an amateur-, the golfer from Castellón has always made the cut.
“I’m really looking forward to the Spanish Open so I can play at home. I hope that on Sunday there will be several Spaniards with possibilities, fighting for the title to put on a show. It would be very nice. I won it in 2002 in El Cortijo (Gran Canaria) and it has been a long time, so I would be very excited to win it again”, says Sergio García.
Indeed, the high point of Sergio Garcia’s relationship with the Spanish Open dates back to 2002, at the El Cortijo course (Gran Canaria), when he shot 275 strokes to beat the Italian Emanuel Canonica by four strokes and a very young Rafael Cabrera-Bello by six. That was Sergio Garcia’s fourth victory on the European Tour.
The challenging course of the RCG El Prat is his next objective: “It is a real great course, one of the best in Europe, without a doubt. I had the honor of playing it for the first time on the day of its inauguration in 2004 and I said I would do everything possible to go there to train: I have fulfilled it and I try to play it frequently”, corroborates Sergio García.
The Spanish golfer has 24 professional victories to his name, eleven of them in the European Tour: Murphy’s Irish Open (1999), Linde German Masters (1999), Trophée Lancôme (2001), Canarias Open de España (2002), Mallorca Classic (2004), Omega European Masters (2005), Castelló Masters Costa Azahar (2008), HSBC Championship (2008), Castelló Masters (2011), Andalucía Masters (2011) and Qatar Masters (2014).
In addition, he has won nine times in the PGA and four times in the Asian Tour, in addition to contributing five times to Europe’s victory in the Ryder Cup (2002, 2004, 2006, 2012 and 2014), to the point of becoming one of the most charismatic players in this competition.
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