Former champion Sergio Garcia has been ruled out of this week’s Masters after testing positive for Covid-19.
Garcia, who defeated Justin Rose in a play-off to win his only major title to date at Augusta National in 2017, will miss his first major championship since 1999.
The 40-year-old Spaniard wrote on Twitter: “On Saturday night after driving back from the Houston Open, I started feeling a bit of a sore throat and a cough.
“The symptoms stayed with me on Sunday morning so I decided to get tested for COVID-19 and so did my wife Angela. Thankfully she tested negative, but I didn’t.
“After 21 years of not missing a Major Championship, I will sadly miss @themasters this week.
“The important thing is that my family and I are feeling good. We’ll come back stronger and give the green jacket a go next April.”
Garcia missed the cut in Houston but had won his 11th PGA Tour title in the Sanderson Farms Championship last month.
The Ryder Cup star has missed the cut on his last two Masters starts and famously tied an unwanted record for most strokes on a hole in the tournament’s history after running up a 13 on the 15th during the first round of his title defence in 2018.
Garcia joins Chile’s Joaquin Niemann in being ruled out of the final major of the year following a positive test for Covid-19.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here