Sergio Garcia battled through winds, pressure and critics to lift the Players Championship title this Sunday. Sergio claimed the winner’s share of $1.6 million out of the total prize purse of $9.5 million! Perhaps more importantly, the young Spaniard has finally silenced recent criticism from the world press!

Sergio has come under fire over the last few years; this victory came 53 tournaments after his last Tour victory three years ago. Many people have criticized Sergio for his erratic, and sometimes amateurish, form with the putter. The relief of having this pressure lifted was evident at the press conference held after the prize ceremony. When asked what the best part about his playoff victory was, Garcia replied, “Not having to listen to you guys!” Go Sergio!

El Niño has been very defensive in the face of criticism of any aspect of his game. Unfortunately for Sergio, his 3rd round still accounted for 34 putts which left him three shots adrift going into the final day. This raised the possibility of another “C-word” (Choke!) ending for the Spaniard, which would have frustrated Sergio even more!

 However, Sergio was equal to the task and he played like a true Champion on Sunday. There was a slight wobble at the par-4 final hole, which was playing as the toughest of the day, where Sergio found a poor lie after his wayward tee shot drifted into the rough. He hacked his second shot to within 50 yards of the green after which a superb pitch to 7 feet set up a high pressure putt! Sergio confidently holed it to card a final-round 71 and force a playoff with Paul Goydos.

Goydos’s approach to the 17th’s treacherous island green fell short of the landing area and sank, along with his Championship dreams, to the bottom of the lake. Sergio’s tee shot found the heart of the green and a tap-in par putt saw El Nino crowned the Players Champion for 2008!

The Bug congratulates Garcia on a fine performance under immense pressure – Felicitaciones Sergio!

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Ok, another year is upon us, and another European Tour season beckons. The European tour officially starts up again This Thursday the 10th of january 2008 in the form of the Joburg Open at the Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club in South Africa, and after the break that the European Tour’s players have had, it promises to be an exciting start to the golfing year!

However, 2008 has already seen its fair share of golf in the form of the US Tour’s season opener, The Mercedes-Benz Championship at the Kapalua Resort in Hawaii.

Open to winners from the 2007 US Tour only, the field was made up by some of the best golfers in the world, along with some notable absences also (Messrs Woods and Harrington opting to sit it out to spend more time at home with family). With a field including the likes of Zach Johnson, Vijay Singh and Angel Cabrera, it promised to be a great start to the golfing year, and the event certainly did’nt disappoint.

However, it wasnt the bigger names who played the best golf and went the distance, it was in fact the swedish entrant Daniel Chopra who ended up winning the event after a thrilling 4 hole playoff with his US counterpart Steve Stricker.

The Swede, one of only two Europeans who were eligible for the event after winning the 2nd to last event of 2007, walked away with $1.1 million, a luxury Mercedes-Benz and a place in the 2008 Masters at Augusta. “It’s the best final round I’ve ever played to win a tournament - and I get to go to Augusta, my life-long dream ” he said of his bogey-free 7-under 66 and his ultimate triumph in the play-off on a Plantation Course he loved from the moment he teed off here.

The swede’s win has seen him rocket up the world rankings, starting the event at 120th in the world, he is now 61st in the world rankings.

The Bug would like to congratulate Chopra on his unexpected success this weekend and hopes that 2008 will throw up many more surprise winners on both the US and European tours.

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Since we launched this channel a couple of weeks ago, we have a very high number of viewers in Finland, which is a bit of a surprise. Whilst we know the Finns are very technologically aware, we didn’t realise just how passionate they were about golf. It would be great to hear from some viewers from Finland! Information about your courses and the development in your country would be great. Perhaps we might get the Golf Bug cameras out to Finland to check for ourselves.

Actually, we would welcome any comment from our viewers about Golf Bug, and things you would like to see on the channel. We will be focusing on building our blog in the near future, so we hope this will be a fun and interesting forum for golf fans everywhere.

Let us know about unusual events! We will consider filming anything that we think will be entertaining or will bring a smile to the faces of our viewers.

Look forward to hearing from you!!

The Bug

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Welcome to Golf Bug.

The Golf Bug blog is your chance to influence the content and look of Golf Bug.TV: the first dedicated golf broadband TV channel that is completely free to view. We will also be hoping that you will respond to some of the blogs we will be posting on a range of topics and from a variety of interesting authors. The first author up is Robin Barwick, a well respected golf journalist. He is obviously not looking to be popular with British golf fans, but he makes a compelling argument…

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