There's an old saying in Sergio Garcia's native Spain that goes like this: "Numero dos, el golfo de bullfighto" which means, literally, "If you're going to spend your career being second it's better to be a golfer than a bullfighter."

Footnote: I was afraid of insulting the people of Spain with that phony Spanish sentence, but – and I am not kidding about this – after Spain's Olympic men's basketball team in Beijing made "slant eyes" on themselves for a TV commercial and continue to laugh about the racial uproar it created, well, these are obviously not very sensitive people.

Getting back to Sergio Garcia, I hope this story does not offend him and cause him to angrily swing a golf club at my head. If he does, however, I hope he uses his putter. Because then he will miss.

As you know, Garcia played in another major tournament last weekend and did not win, running his career record in the majors to Sergi-O for 38.  He gave away this one, the PGA Championship, on the 17th hole Sunday by missing a four-foot putt that any of us – and that includes you in the back over there, yes you, the woman trying to blow out the candle on her 104th birthday cake – would have made. I'm not kidding.

The other day I went to my public course here in Colorado and put 50 golf balls on the green, each four feet from the hole. I made all 50 putts. I made some right-handed and some left-handed. I had my wife stand behind me and sound the air horn from the Queen Mary in my ear during my backstroke and I made all 15 of those four-foot putts, too. I made 10 of the putts while being trampled by an elk. I hit the lip on just one – distracted perhaps by the way the 400-pound bear was chewing on my hamstring – but even that putt dropped.

(Once, I think it was back in 2002, I made 5,675 consecutive four-foot putts – stopping only because the circulation to my head was being cut off by the blindfold and I had a rash from the rope that was holding my hands together behind my back.)

But Sergio has a four-footer to maintain a tie for the lead on the 71st hole of a major on Sunday and, well, he missed it, handing the title to Padraig Harrington. At last year's British Open, Garcia missed a 10-foot putt for par on the 72nd hole and went on to lose in a playoff to Harrington.

In the press room Sunday, Garcia was asked whether at the turn on Sunday he felt he was on his way to winning his first major.

"Next question, please," snapped Senor Difficulto Swallowez. "Let's keep this as positive as we can, please."

OK. I'm positive that given a short putt to win a major, my beloved pet, Dennis the Wonderdog, would have a better chance of sinking it than Sergio Garcia. Even if he was licking himself at the time. And that goes for Dennis, too.

Golf began for Garcia in 1983, at the age of three, in his hometown of Castellon, which combines the Spanish words Cas ("I") and tellon ("bet you three goats he misses this one to the left.")

His golf teacher back then was his father, Victor. And always, the father would encourage the young boy, using words such as:

"Nice shot, my son."

"My child, one day you will be a champion."

"Putting is for sissies. Let's go hit the driver some more."