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" SERGIO GARCIA is a man. Or he is a boy. You can&amp;#039;t be sure. The man wakes to do battle with other men. The boy wakes to grab a game or two on the Super Nintendo before heading off to practice. The man throttles Tiger Woods and plays him to the wire in the PGA. The boy finishes at 32 over par in the British Open and ends up weeping in his mother&amp;#039;s arms. The man has a list of things he wants: to win a major championship, to crush his competition at every venue using every club in his bag, to be called Sergio, just Sergio, and nothing more. The boy appears to want for nothing, to be utterly happy playing a difficult game in a large field of grass with a stick in his hand. It&amp;#039;s confusing. Only one thing is certain: Sergio Garc\u00EDa wants to be your friend.  He&amp;#039;s nineteen. Just months ago, he was the world&amp;#039;s finest amateur golfer; now he&amp;#039;s the world&amp;#039;s most promising pro. It&amp;#039;s all there, right in front of him. Everything he wants. His entourage knows it. His fellow players smell it on him. The crowds sense it. So he wades into galleries, signing, signing, signing. Golf balls. Hats. Programs. Photos. He writes his name on everything they hand him. Sergio, he writes again and again. Sergio, as if that explains it all. Fans rise and crackle in his presence. He high-fives children, grazes arms as he talks, rubs the occasional head for good luck.  During practice rounds, he flutters here and there, laughing, hanging on the other players like some kid brother to the whole world. But when Sergio reaches for a club, he transforms. His eyes narrow. His shoulders hitch, roll, then settle. He is another animal now, the one they&amp;#039;re all betting on. This is not the ice-milk cool of David Duval or the pinched brow of Davis Love III or the put-upon pout of Tiger Woods; there&amp;#039;s nothing painful in this expression. He comes out of his swing joyously, suddenly. He comes up smiling. This is Sergio, the boy who would be man. SERGIO WANTS to run. He&amp;#039;s on the ninth hole at Carnoustie, site of the 1999 British Open, grinding his way through a pretournament practice round. He&amp;#039;s knocked down a 5-iron from 210 yards. The wind blows lightly from the sea. In a few days, he&amp;#039;ll melt down, like a little boy, and finish dead last at the cut, shooting a horrendous 89--83. But now he&amp;#039;s drifting through the nasty layout like a seabird along the docks, nipping down now and again for a treat. He runs. It looks oddly natural to see a boy running down the middle of a fairway on a sunny day, but this one is flocked by chattering gaggles of children, who lift their legs in the high gorse, struggling to keep pace. Later in the summer, he&amp;#039;ll close his eyes and blast a 6-iron from behind a tree at Medinah to within fifteen feet of the cup, a shot both marvelous and colossally stupid at the same time. He&amp;#039;ll take off, breaking into a gallop, leaping into a childlike split in order to see the ball land gently on the distant green. &amp;quot;Sometimes I feel I have to run,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Why not? It gives you a heartbeat.&amp;quot; That he moves in contrast to the sometimes torpid and joyless pace of those around him, dashing straight into the cameras, is an accurate measure of who he is. He has always moved farther and faster than those around him, and the leap at Medinah is the moment that will define him, here at the doorway to his career.  SERGIO IS at the range, packed in cheek by jowl with the likes of tour veterans like Larry Nelson, Steve Stricker, and Miguel Angel Jim\u00E9nez. He strokes his 4-iron crisply, each shot ten yards farther than the last--190, 200, 210. He maxes out at 260 yards, a massive shot by any standards, but no one seems to notice. It&amp;#039;s as though he has been among them for decades.  Sergio is not imposing. He&amp;#039;s reed thin and narrow waisted, slump shouldered and lithe. He tippy-toes to five feet ten inches and carries only 155 pounds on his frame. His face has that flushed, incomplete look of adolescence, making him appear trapped in the process of becoming, as if his bones were betraying him, growing to spite him. His smile, which he wears easily, is small, like a comma. You get the sense that another smile may exist beneath it, one that does not give in to modesty. He reminds you of someone. The kid who cuts your lawn. Your little brother. A skateboarder.  Sergio&amp;#039;s swing reminds you of someone, too. Try Ben Hogan. It&amp;#039;s a free and oiled motion, powerful yet more contained than those of the tour&amp;#039;s longest hitters. He whips through the ball, his hands low and sure, finishing the swing elegantly, hands high, elbows flexed. You could watch him hit a whiskey barrel full of range balls and never hear that familiar metallic clank that echoes on all sides of him. No, the sound of Sergio&amp;#039;s impact is vicious and pure, as firm and reliable as the sound of a knife puncturing a melon. Each shot is a small assassination. SERGIO WANTS to be a man. He wonders aloud: &amp;quot;What is it to be a man? Can you take care of yourself? Can you watch your own way?&amp;quot; He puzzles a moment, weighing his life on the course, where he&amp;#039;s been a man since he was hustling Cokes on the practice green at age six, against his life in the world, where he&amp;#039;s surrounded by handlers, coaches, and managers. The rituals, the rites of manhood, are a familiar drone. We circumcise, shave, tattoo, drive, deer hunt, lose our cherry. There&amp;#039;s more than one line in the sand. For the golfer, coming of age is equally ambiguous. There are junior tournaments. Sergio took one of those before he was ten. There are club championships. He won his at twelve. There is making the cut in a pro event. He did that at fourteen. There&amp;#039;s the amateur championship, which he won at fifteen. There is turning pro, which he did after being low amateur at the Masters last spring. Then he won in his sixth pro tournament, the Irish Open, and a month later finished second in the PGA.  Where were you at nineteen? HE&amp;#039;S SERIOUS about this name business. The words tumble out, his English patchy and muscular all at once. &amp;quot;I like to be recognized as Sergio or Sergio Garc\u00EDa,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;not as Garc\u00EDa, just.&amp;quot; After he pursued Tiger Woods at the PGA like a hacked-off bail bondsman, no one would dare call him Garc\u00EDa, just.  He&amp;#039;s been practicing press conferences since he was thirteen, and he trips into the clich\u00E9s of sports whenever he&amp;#039;s unsure of himself. &amp;quot;I think my mentality has always been a good one,&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;ll say. &amp;quot;But you never know what&amp;#039;s going to happen. I now realize I can win some tournaments. And I&amp;#039;ll try to do my best and keep playing well.&amp;quot; These phrases, these lines, these reliable nuggets of nothingness, have been taught to him for protection. They are his armor, slipped over his slender shoulders by his teammates when he comes off the course. And make no mistake, Sergio has a team--a manager, an assistant, a Tour-savvy caddie, a strength coach, and an English teacher. They refer to themselves as Team Sergio. Sergio refers to them as his family. La familia. Among them, there is a breathlessness. They call down great things upon him, upon his career. At night, they eat together, and Sergio sits among them, a member of the team, part of the family. For them, it&amp;#039;s been the better part of a decade in the making. For us, Sergio has only just begun.  His father and coach, Victor, club pro at Club de Campo del Mediterraneo in Borriol, Spain, learned the game by crafting his first set of shafts from olive branches, silently grooving his swing after sunset in his backyard. He came to know the swing better as a caddie, at a club where he was not allowed to play. Victor refuses to talk about Sergio. Instead, he trails his son during the rounds, always at a distance, but always recognizable for the yellow-shafted driver he carries tucked in the crook of his elbow like a regal weapon. He moves slowly and precisely, watching each move with an attitude approaching detachment. Still, it&amp;#039;s obvious that his elegance, his calm, passes through to the boy. He is visible only to Sergio and bristles when the press pays him any mind. This man is no Earl Woods. There won&amp;#039;t be any Raising a Sergio by Victor Garc\u00EDa. He&amp;#039;s there for the boy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m glad he&amp;#039;s there,&amp;quot; Sergio the boy says. &amp;quot;I am learning from him, even when he&amp;#039;s not talking. I need a father. Still. Always.&amp;quot;  WHAT SERGIO DOESN&amp;#039;T want is to be compared to other phenoms, current or former. He wants no part of a comparison to Tiger Woods, though he wouldn&amp;#039;t mind a rivalry. &amp;quot;I have my own swing, my own game. I am Sergio. Just me,&amp;quot; he says. Woods smiles wryly when asked about Sergio. &amp;quot;When you get off to a good start at a young age, you&amp;#039;re very confident. You&amp;#039;re vivacious. You feel like you can play well against anybody at any time. That&amp;#039;s what he was able to do when he turned pro.&amp;quot; Then he cools. &amp;quot;As far as a rivalry, I don&amp;#039;t think there is one. Yet.&amp;quot; When Woods, twenty-three, bagged his second major at Medinah in August, the television guys rolled out the inevitable graphics, comparing his first three years on tour with Jack Nicklaus&amp;#039;s. We need these yardsticks in sports. They press the now flush against the then, forcing us into parallels where there were none before. One thing was clear that Sunday: If Tiger is indeed the next Jack Nicklaus, the stern, corporate taskmaster, the ultimate measuring stick, then Sergio can be the next Arnold Palmer, the guy with the legion of fans, chasing the favorite, glaring from green to tee, taking brave chances, and drawing us toward him as he invents victory again and again. BACK AT CARNOUSTIE, in the weeks before his emergence into the larger golf consciousness, Sergio is surrounded during a practice round. There are enough fresh-faced British schoolboys in the crowd to stage a revival of Oliver!, and they all seem to have scented Sergio, to have marked him as one of their own. Their fathers follow close behind, picking up hints, rules to live by. When Sergio stops to putt, they talk. &amp;quot;Look at his hands,&amp;quot; one of the fathers whispers, nudging his boy. When the putt drops, Sergio runs again. &amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;s he going then?&amp;quot; asks one of the boys. &amp;quot;Just look at him,&amp;quot; his father says. &amp;quot;Amazing.&amp;quot;  They watch him silent and stock-still. Sergio&amp;#039;s off to the next tee box, then onward. Just going. The wind is freshening, but for a moment the crowd hangs back. Sergio grows smaller in the distance. They know where he&amp;#039;s going. They know that he&amp;#039;ll get there. And they follow him, man and boy alike. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a207/golf-sergio-1199/>