The spat between Sergio Garcia and world No.1 Tiger Woods shows little sign of being put to bed, but the Spaniard is unlikely to lose any sleep over it.
The animosity between the pair became public during the Players Championship at Sawgrass earlier this month, when they were paired together in the third round.
Garcia felt he had been disturbed on his approach to the second hole when spectators cheered Woods for taking a fairway wood out of his bag; the American indicating he would try to reach the green from his position in the trees as a result. The row acted as an unfortunate distraction from some thrilling golf at Sawgrass, with the players level on 13 under par until Garcia dumped two balls into the water on the famous par-three 17th hole.
The resentment between them has been kept on simmer since then and showed little sign of abating as Garcia spoke yesterday ahead of BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. "He's not my favourite guy to play with," said Garcia. "He's not the nicest guy on Tour. We don't like each other. It doesn't take a rocket engineer to figure that out. He is who he is. I am who I am. It's best we're not playing together again."
Asked yesterday if he would contact Garcia to clear the air, Woods was curt; his simple "no" intended to invite no further questions on the matter.
Yet Garcia later intimated that their cold relationship should not be considered a problem on the course. "Obviously you can't like everybody. I think there's people that you connect with and there's people that you don't. It's pretty much as simple as that," said the Spaniard.
"He doesn't need me in his life, I don't need him in mine, let's move on and keep doing what we're doing. It's never really been a true connection like I would have with maybe with Luke [Donald] or Lee [Westwood] or some of the other guys.
"It's fine. It doesn't mean that I cannot play with him. It's just another player, a good player. It's just when I'm playing with someone I enjoy, there's a bit more talking going round and when you're playing with someone that you don't fancy as much you're just a little bit quiet."
Garcia has not played in the European Tour's flagship event since finishing fifth in 2000, partly as a result of playing on the PGA Tour in the United States but also due to tax reasons. However, an easing of the tax burden brought in for the Olympics last year has contributed to his return to the European Tour, as well as a desire to reunite last year's triumphant Ryder Cup team from Medinah which has only been spoilt by Peter Hanson's withdrawal from the competition with a back injury.
"[The tax situation] has helped a little bit," Garcia said. "I don't think it's great still but it has obviously helped. But the main reason was that they wanted to make this tournament extra special this year with everything that happened last year with the Ryder Cup so it was worth it to make a little bit of an extra effort to come and play."
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