Jim McCabe

Whenever Sergio Garcia is questioned about being the best player never to win a major — a string that was extended after missing the cut at the Masters — he protests by saying he’s still young. Then, almost to prove his point, the Spaniard does something that makes you wonder if a pacifier shouldn’t be part of his golf equipment.

The most recent example took place in Round 3 of the WGC CA Championship at the famed Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami when Garcia, angered by a sloppy three-putt bogey that helped knock him out of contention for the World Golf Championship, leaned over and dumped a juicy wad of spit into the cup.

Nice etiquette, you brat.

Enough people are still convinced Garcia — now in his ninth year as a professional — is in possession of an exciting youthful exuberance, so they’ve made excuses for him. It’s no worse than shouting out four-letter words, they’ll say. It’s the same as slamming a club into turf, they’ll say. I respectfully disagree; spitting is vulgar and far more disrespectful. His colleagues were going to have to reach into that hole and retrieve golf balls; ask them how they would have felt had their ball been coated in another player’s saliva.

Supporters have been defending Garcia since he captured the golf world’s attention with spirited play as a 19-year-old at the 1999 PGA Championship. He was young. He was exciting. He was flamboyant.

Great, but that was then, this is many years later. Garcia is 27 and should have grown up by now. His immaturity was an excuse for the time he took off his golf shoe and tossed it at a sign during a tournament. It was an excuse for the time in Australia when he berated an official and caused a row over a ruling that went against him (correctly, I will point out). It was an excuse when Garcia whined like a pre-schooler at the 2002 U.S. Open and suggested Tiger Woods always drew the better tee times, a preposterous view (and totally wrong, I will point out, for the afternoon wave, of which Garcia was a part, had the better weather that day at Bethpage and a lower scoring average to prove it).

His petulant acts could be linked to his on-course frustrations. Mind you, it’s not an excuse, but an explanation. Truly one of the most gifted players in the world, Garcia has won six times on the PGA Tour, but not since 2005, and he’s yet to win a major. Although he would be right to point out that many years of good golf remain, he knows that countryman Seve Ballesteros at 27 had already won four of his five major championships. He also should know that another countryman, Jose Maria Olazabal, is arguably the most respected player on the world golf stage.

Garcia would be best-served to follow Olazabal’s lead and stop acting half his age.