Garcia finally shook off his nearly-man tag on Sunday when we won a Major at the 74th attempt, aged 37, beating England's Justin Rose in a play-off after a riveting back-nine duel.
Garcia, 37, made the breakthrough in his 71st major as a professional, almost 18 years after finishing runner-up to Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship.
Both men played the flawless hole up until the green where Rose missed a seven-foot birdie putt to hand Garcia his chance, but he rolled a shorter - but arguably more testing putt - wide of the hole and they would soon replay the last.
It was worth the wait.
On the 72nd regulation hole, Rose missed an eight-foot birdie putt, leaving Garcia a five-footer to win, but he pushed it wide right.
She has been a major influence on Garcia's life, and helped him achieve one of the best things in golf; winning a green jacket.
Cape Town - South Africa's Glen Murray is about to collect the biggest cheque of his career after helping Sergio Garcia to victory in the 81st Masters at Augusta National on Sunday. The oldest player to win his first major was Jerry Barber, who was 45 when he won the 1961 PGA Championship.
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Every player, every human, and this attack was on us as humans, can be scared stiff by this. If you are not in the bus you can not imagine how it is exactly.
That was more than 25 years after he'd first made his mark, becoming the youngest player to win the European Amateur in 1995.
"Congrats El Nino Vamos!" the Englishman tweeted while Michelle Wie, who also had to wait a long time before clinching her first major title in 2014, was delighted for Garcia. "It is going to sting for sure but I really feel that this is a tournament that I can win". I'm very committed to working hard on the game, and get past a little bit of a lull in my results the last couple of years.
It took a late run to get to 75, a score he shot here in the opening round and his largest number in 16 career rounds at Augusta National. Rose was poised to deliver a knockout on the par-5 13th when Garcia went left beyond the creek and into the bush.
Garcia and fellow competitor and friend, Justin Rose, went into the 18th hole deadlocked.
"I'm not going to lie - it's not the golf course that I'm most comfortable in, because I've become more of a fader than a drawer of the ball, and this golf course is asking you to hit a lot of draws". "I felt a calmness I never felt on a major Sunday".
The monkey was finally off Garcia's back and he was a Masters champion; a major champion after 22 Top-10s in 73 major starts. "I've come to the conclusion I need to play for second or third place in any major". Now one of golf's most polarizing figures has a championship in a major tournament on his resume. "Because for a while there, it was 'What are we doing?' And I wasn't doing much wrong and that's what was so tough".
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