Sergio Garcia endures a heartbreaking year

Reporting from Pebble Beach — 

A year ago Sergio Garcia blamed his lackluster golf on his broken heart.

This year he is worried only about a sore right hand, hoping it doesn’t cause his shots to wander.

Garcia makes his season debut in the U.S. at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which begins Thursday. And getting a hand to heal might prove easier than his heart.

The 30-year-old Spaniard hasn’t played here since 2001 and, in a testament to his star power, he is paired with actor Josh Duhamel of “Transformers” movie fame and husband to the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie.

Being an actor and married to a famous singer, Duhamel is used to being in the celebrity spotlight. Garcia?

Not so much.

But that is where he found himself when he began dating Greg Norman’s daughter only to end up experiencing the very human condition of being dumped.

While he may be more than a little bit glad that his hand has the attention now, the lingering effects of tendinitis in that hand could hurt his chances at Pebble Beach.

Garcia, who was injured last November during the third round of the Dubai World Championship, knew immediately he was in trouble.

“I was hurting quite a bit,” he said. “I was hitting a shot on the 17th hole on the Saturday of the event, on the par-three. The club kind of got a little bit stuck in the ground and pulled my hand back.”

For seven weeks, Garcia said, he was in pain. Had he quit as soon as he injured the hand, he figures his recovery might have been quicker. But in the golf world, sponsors matter. One of his biggest backers, Omega watches, was also a major sponsor of a World Cup team event the week after he hurt the hand.

“I tried to make an extra effort and it didn’t help very much,” Garcia said.

He began the 2009 season ranked No. 2 in the world behind Tiger Woods. He is down to No. 15 after going through the 2009 season without a victory or even a top-three finish.

Garcia, who had not had a serious injury before this, said he couldn’t even pick up a club because of the pain.

“It bothered me because I couldn’t play golf,” he said. “It was a different experience but one you always learn from.”

When the injury lingered, a worried Garcia went to a hand specialist in Barcelona.

After an MRI exam, the result was encouraging.

“Nothing serious, that was good to hear,” Garcia said.

Two days before he turned 30, Garcia was allowed to start swinging a club. He went to the Canary Islands and played a charity event for a young friend who had died.

“She was a golfer too,” he said. “She was a student at Duke and she died when she was 24 from lung cancer.”

The state of his game, he acknowledged, is a work in progress because of the injury.

“I’m working hard on my chipping and putting,” Garcia said. “It’s going to take a little bit of time. Every time you’re working on new things, they don’t come easily. You know, it usually takes two or three or four months to settle in. It’s just a matter of keeping hard at it. Hopefully I’d like to get back to that level we played in the middle to the end of 2008.”

Besides winning the 2008 Players Championship in a playoff over Paul Goydos, Garcia electrified the crowds at the PGA Championship that year when he was tied with Padraig Harrington heading toward the final two holes. But Garcia bogeyed the 17th and walked the 18th with his shoulders slumped instead of with his usual chest-forward gait.

Harrington finished with a birdie and a par.

It was Garcia’s ninth top-five finish in one of the majors -- little consolation at the time.

Yet it is that natural exuberance and aggressive style that make Garcia a fan favorite.

As he practiced Wednesday, dozens of fans yelled encouragement.

“You’re going to win it, Sergio,” one man said.

“Get it going,” said another.

No question, Garcia still has star power. But this year, he’d prefer to have more wins.

diane.pucin@latimes.com

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