Sergio Garcia had a chance to square his quarterfinal match with Matt Kuchar on the seventh hole Saturday afternoon during the WGC Match Play, but the 2017 Masters champion missed his par putt by a matter of inches. What followed was extremely strange.
Given the circumstances, Kuchar would automatically concede the tap-in putt to Garcia, and the two players would halve the hole. Garcia, however, quickly attempted to knock the ball in with the back of his putter, and the ball lipped out. The second stroke occurred before Kuchar could verbally concede the putt – meaning Garcia finished with a double-bogey and lost the hole.
Kuchar said afterward that he would have conceded the putt, but that doesn’t matter. As soon as Garcia made contact with the ball before Kuchar could concede, it counted as an additional stroke.
Garcia was understandably frustrated, and took a wild swing at the ball with his putter after missing on the next hole. It’s been a rough year for Garcia, who was disqualified from a tournament in Saudi Arabia earlier this season for “vandalizing greens” a day after throwing a fit in a bunker.
