SERGIO GARCIA has decided to rest rather than go looking for a third successive victory at this week’s World Championship in Shanghai.
The 31-year-old’s victory in the Andalucia Masters at Valderrama on Sunday qualified him for the WGC-HSBC Champions event he won in 2008, but his place goes instead to American Jim Furyk.
Garcia is back into the world’s top 20 after taking his home Castello Masters by a runaway 11-shot margin and then beating fellow Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez by one shot at Valderrama.
The China tournament is also without world number one Luke Donald – his wife Diane is expecting their second child – twice winner Phil Mickelson and a host of other eligible players.
Rory McIlroy will be there, though, after grabbing golf’s richest prize of €1.4 million in the Shanghai Masters and the other world top 10 players in the 78-man field are Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer and Adam Scott.
Keegan Bradley, the shock rookie winner of the PGA Championship in Atlanta, says he cant wait to take his place at the WGC-HSBC Champions event.
The 25-year-old nephew of LPGA legend Pat Bradley had already booked his ticket to China when he sealed his maiden PGA Tour win at the Byron Nelson Championship in May.
But he guaranteed he’d be one of the stars of the show in Shanghai when he joined the flood of recent first-time Major winners and put his name next to those of Francis Oiumet (1913) and Ben Curtis (2003) as only the third player in the history of golf to win such a prestigious title at his first attempt.
Further icing on the cake came recently when he won the four-player Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda.
“I’ve watched that tournament on TV for as long as it’s been there,” said Bradley of the HSBC. “I can remember a lot of the holes. Its exciting to think I’ve qualified to play in that tournament. I always think of that 18th hole and the water on the right with the huge red HSBC pyramid floating in the water.
“It’s an exciting thing. For a rookie like me its a no-brainer. That’s one of the highlights of the schedule.”
He headed out to China last week and played in the Shanghai Masters won by Rory McIlroy, a closing 71 giving Bradley a tie for 12th.
His only previous experience of playing in Asia was in 2009 at the Korean Golf Tour’s SK Telecom Open at the Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon. He finished 14th in an event won by Park Sang-Hyun.
Bradley’s eagerness to get to China can be traced back to a more humble upbringing that the name of his illustrious aunt might suggest.
His father Mark was originally a night waterman at the Jackson Hole Golf Tennis Club in Jackson, Wyoming before returning east to become a golf professional just before Keegan was born.
“Everything for me is a bonus out here. I didn’t grow up with a lot so anything that happens out here is a huge bonus . . . Dad was a club pro and I’d just travel around with him. I’d get up early and go to work with him and hang out at the course all day. Golf was what I always loved and I still love it. I’m lucky to be out here.”
