LIV Golfer Sergio Garcia fails to qualify for The Open; blames fans and poor crowd control for it
PGA: U.S. Open – Final Round

LIV Golfer Sergio Garcia fails to qualify for The Open; blames fans and poor crowd control for it (Image source: IMAGN)
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Sergio Garcia, for the second consecutive year, has missed out on qualifying for the Open Championship.

The options for Major qualification for LIV Golf players are limited, but it’s not out of the question. Garcia gave it his best effort at Open Qualifying, but he came up two strokes shy of making it in.

The LIV star, who just recently played the U.S. Open, attributed his failure to factors beyond his control. The golfer was admonished for going too slow, but he was upset about crowds following and disrupting play for him and the other players on his tees.

Here’s what he said via Bunkered:

“When you have 2,000 people following us with no ropes, nothing. The marshals were trying to do as good a job as they could do but obviously, we had to stop pretty much on every tee for two or three minutes to hit our tee shots because people were walking in front of the tee and on the fairway.”
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He said there was no recourse unless they wanted to hit fans with their swings. He believes that the tournament’s organizers did not take any of that into account, and it made everyone rush, according to Garcia.

Garcia added that the conditions were already tricky and that the crowd-based issue required some extra time, which didn’t help matters.

“Because of that, I made a couple of bogeys that might cost me getting to Troon.”
Garcia’s frustration boiled over on the eighth hole when he was caught yelling at officials. He sarcastically remarked that they ‘are always right and players are always wrong.’

Can Sergio Garcia make it into the Open Championship now?
The door for Sergio Garcia to get into the Open Championship this month is closed, but it’s not locked. After failing to qualify by Open Qualifying, the odds of anyone in Garcia’s situation are not great. However, he still has one chance.

The Open Championship, just like the Masters, PGA Championship, and US Open, offers sponsors exemptions. These are for players the tournament believes should be in but aren’t.

Sergio Garcia can still make it into the Open Championship (Image: IMAGN)
Sergio Garcia can still make it into the Open Championship (Image: IMAGN)
That is how Garcia made it to the U.S. Open. In other tournaments, sponsor exemptions have been given out to players who made the effort to qualify but came up short. That’s how Joaquin Niemann made it into the Masters, and it’s precisely how Sergio Garcia could still make it into the Open.

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Edited by Pratham K Sharma