Ryder Cup: Sergio Garcia reportedly tried to pay almost $1 million in fines in late effort to make European team
Sergio Garcia isn't eligible for the European Ryder Cup team as he’s not a DP World Tour member anymore
Sergio Garcia apparently made one last attempt to fix his relationship with the DP World Tour and get into the Ryder Cup.
The about-face, however, was apparently just too late.
Garcia, according to The Telegraph’s James Corrigan, approached the DP World Tour earlier this month and offered to pay all of his outstanding fines — close to $1 million — with the European league in order to be allowed to compete on the European Ryder Cup team later this month in Rome.
Garcia resigned his DP World Tour membership in order to join LIV Golf, as several other prominent European players did. Garcia, however, never paid the initial £100,000 fine the league levied against him.
“They suddenly came to us and said that not only would he pay the £100,000, but also all of the outstanding fines if he was allowed to play,” a DP World Tour source told The Telegraph.
That total was estimated to be more than £700,000 — which is about $867,000. It's unclear what the other fines were for.
While the feud between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf has died down since the new proposed partnership was announced, the DP World Tour apparently told Garcia it wasn’t interested just yet.
“They also said they’d play in whatever events we wanted, apart from those that clashed with the remaining LIV tournaments,” the source told The Telegraph. “But it was explained that, despite the ongoing peace talks, as he had resigned his membership, he is not eligible to join until next year. It was all a bit bizarre as that was made clear all along.”
Garcia formally resigned from the DP World Tour earlier this summer, shortly after a United Kingdom-based arbitration panel upheld £100,000 fines that the DP World Tour handed down after 17 of its players competed in LIV Golf events without a release in 2022. Garcia was the only player among that group to not actually pay the fine, which equates to about $126,000.
As one of the requirements to make the European team is to be a DP World Tour member, Garcia was then ineligible to either compete or serve in a leadership role.
Garcia has scored 28.5 points over his 10 Ryder Cup appearances, which makes him the highest-scoring European player ever. He holds a 25-13-7 career record. Garcia won 11 times on the PGA Tour and picked up his first and only major championship win at the Masters in 2017.
“I think it’s a shame, right?” Rory McIlroy said of Garcia, along with Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, losing his Ryder Cup eligibility in May. “I think it’s a shame that you’ve got the highest-points scorer ever in the Ryder Cup and two guys that when they look back on their career, that’s probably a big chunk of their legacy is the roles that they have played in the Ryder Cup for Europe. For those three guys to not captain Europe one day, it’s a shame.”
While Garcia and other LIV Golf members may be eligible to compete in future Ryder Cups, depending on how the merger-of-sorts between the three leagues shakes out, Garcia won’t be in Italy next week.
The Ryder Cup kicks off on Sept. 28 from the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club outside of Rome.
