Whatever Happened to Sergio Garcia?

Once a prominent factor in major tournaments for the almost the last decade, Sergio Garcia has faded from the public eye while Spain's golden generation of athletes are out winning titles.

Sergio was supposed to be the next best thing in Spanish golf since Seve Ballesteros, but that has not been the case.

He has yet to win a major and the only Spaniard to win a major since Ballesteros' last major win in 1984 was Jose Maria Olazabal, who won the 1994 and 1999 Masters.

Sergio first came into the public eye when he finished second in the 1999 PGA Championship in a famous duel against Tiger Woods. After not placing in the top ten in 2000, he started a run of finishing in the top ten in six of his next nine majors beginning with the 2001 British Open. In the other three majors ('01 PGA, '03 Masters, '03 PGA) he missed the cut once and finished 28th and 35th in the other two.

From that point on, Sergio did not have the consistency in majors like he did from 2001 to 2003 until 2005 and 2006 when he again finished in the top ten in four of the eight majors in those two years.

Since then, Garcia has not made many headlines in the golfing world. Since 2007, Garcia has finished in the top ten only twice and when he has not made the first page of the leader board he has been way behind the leader.

Now that the golden generation of Spanish athletes like Rafael Nadal and the Spanish soccer team, one has to wonder what happened to Garcia and how even more impressive the resume of Spanish athletes' accomplishments would have been. 

That question may never be answered. One thing golf fans will wonder is what if Sergio had lived up to his full potential.