JohnFMurray.com

During the past few days, Bryant publicly has aired his desire for Jerry West to return to an organization that he deemed a “mess.” He also said he thought team owner Dr. Jerry Buss lied to him.
The Rustic Lite

Bryant demanded a trade Wednesday, then several hours and a Phil Jackson conversation later, rescinded that demand.

These are problems that can’t be solved overnight.

“I think (Kobe) was frustrated and expressed himself maybe more than he wanted to,” said Dr. John Murray, a sports psychologist in Palm Beach, Fla. “He’s got some repair work to do. If he wants to stay, he’ll have to do some kind of public commentary being apologetic for overreacting.

“I don’t know what Phil said to him, but it’s a sign of the times where we don’t focus as much maybe on the teams as much as we used to. People think they can be traded very quickly. It’s somewhat of a statement of ego that someone could demand to be traded when they’re being taken care of so well by a team. But it also speaks to his competitiveness, his fire and his desire.”

Should fans deem it necessary for an explanation from the Lakers front office as well? Did owner Jerry Buss really tell Jackson this would be a rebuilding process, all the while telling Bryant he would do things necessary to win now?

Buss, general manager Mitch Kupchak, Bryant and Jackson likely will have some serious meetings in the near future, the kind where they might lock themselves in a room until there’s a general understanding.

Murray believes much progress can be made in closed-door meetings.

“They have to say, `We have to do whatever we have to do to get the family together,”‘ Murray said. “Then tell everybody. Work out the problem, then tell people (outside) what the issue is. There has to be a message of unity. This accusatory tone on either part is a recipe for L.A. disaster.”

Pam Beach, FL — May 25, 2007 — I’m excited to report that the 2007 Tennis.com Goal Setting Project was just presented an editor’s award for online excellence by The Morning News. Super teamwork by everyone involved and the hard work of two recreational tennis players helped this project gain the recognition it deserved. Text of The Morning News award can be seen at http://www.johnfmurray.com/News.aspx?id=610

The project was kicked off by a two page goal setting article in the Jan/Feb 2007 print edition of Tennis Magazine which you can read at http://www.smarttennis.com/tennismagazineperformancegoalsJanFeb2007.htm.

The goal setting article was just the launching pad. Theory and principles are needed, but proving that goal setting works by rolling up sleeves and sweating is much more compelling. Tony Lance, Tennis.com editor, came up with an amazing idea which I dubbed the online equivalent of reality television. Have we created a new nonfiction genre called “reality literature?”

Using top tennis coaching, sport psychology advice, solid goal setting principles, and the support of many thousands, two serious recreational tennis players, Joe Pambianco and Kellie Walters, dedicated themselves to living in a fish bowl all year by setting and achieving goals before our curious eyes. They aimed to raise their NTRP rating by year’s end. If this happened it would be an almost unheard of accomplishment within such a short time frame. But it is indeed happening!

Joe and Kellie are working very hard on court while blogging their struggles at Tennis.com. Readers follow along and add their commentary along with the coaches, sport psychologist and editors. Joe and Kellie’s posts have been superb reality literature and many around the world are cheering them on to success despite the many obstacles in the way. With nowhere to hide, these two warriors have no choice but to fight on with courage and passion. Their efforts are inspiring others too. We are seeing tennis return as a hip and popular sport with youth. By the end of this project we will all likely see more clearly the benefits of goal setting in Joe and Kellie’s improvement and new ratings.

The Morning News is credited for noticing the quality of this project. Future projects of achievement in sports, business and arts could follow in the footsteps of this new genre which might someday be seen as having originated with Tennis Magazine online.

Contact

John F. Murray
340 Royal Poinciana Way
Suite 339-J
Palm Beach, FL 33480
Tel: 561-596-9898
Fax: 561-805-8662
http://www.JohnFMurray.com

Favorite Virtual Mixed-Doubles Partners – We love seeing the blog format used intelligently by big publishers: appropriately modeled after a magazines purpose rather than pelleted from the masthead. Tennis has done it well with its male and female versions of Ready, Set, Goal. Featuring two engaging amateur tennis players, Joe in San Jose, Calif., and Kellie in Olathe, Kan., the blogs document their progress as each tries to reach a big goal in the course of a year, enlisting experts and readers to help them along. Fun reading when it’s raining and you can’t get to the courts yourself.

» See January, 2007 Article “Ready, Set, Goal”

» See Kellie Walters blog at Ready, Set, Goal

» See Joe Pambiancos blog at Ready, Set, Goal

The 66th-ranked American broke Hrbaty four times as the Slovakian struggled with his serve. Hrbaty had seven double faults and faced 16 break points.

Hrbaty rallied from 1-3 down to lead Spadea 5-4 in the second set, but was broken again at 5-5.

Spadea will next play Diego Hartfield of Argentina, who beat Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, 6-2, 6-4.

Also, Michael Russell of the United States advanced to the second round by defeating Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina, 6-1, 7-6 (4).

His reason? He said he’s lost respect for the team.

In the waning seconds of what would be a Phoenix victory, the Spurs’ Robert Horry hip-checked the Suns’ two-time MVP Steve Nash, sending him sprawling into the scorer’s table. The flagrant foul cost Horry a two-game suspension while Suns’ players Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were suspended for one game because they left the bench during an ensuing fight between the teams.

Beyond the Spurs being pushed to the brink with the best-of-seven series locked at 2-2, it also appears that the team’s reputation is in similar peril.

Dubbed the goody-two-shoes team and lauded more for its work ethic and classy reputation, the Spurs’ unblemished image might have sullied after Horry’s flagrant foul and two other incidents involving the Spurs’ Bruce Bowen.

Questions are being asked among fans: Have the Spurs gone from darlings to demons? Has “Big Shot Rob become Cheap Shot Bob?

Strong, 64, said he thinks so.

“That was disgraceful, hopefully the kids went to bed by then, Strong said in a telephone interview. “It was unsportsmanlike, vindictive and vicious. That wasn’t consistent of my image of Robert Horry and the Spurs.

“It’s embarrassing to their legacy, he added.

That legacy includes three championships over the last eight years. Coincidently, in the past 11 seasons, three Spurs—Steve Smith in 2002, David Robinson in 2001 and Avery Johnson in 1998—have received the Joe Dumars Award for sportsmanship, which honors those players who best exemplify ethical behavior, fair play and integrity on the court.

“We love what the (Spurs) stand for: reputation and everything they do for community,Strong said. “It’s all wonderful, but a lot of that went away in those few minutes.

Stoudemire has sounded out, calling the Spurs a “dirty team. The all-star claimed that Bowen clipped him behind his leg—which he had surgically repaired and forced him to miss nearly the entire season last year — when he was going up for a dunk in Game 2. Combine that with Bowen’s questionable knee to Nash’s groin in Game 3 and Horry’s smack-down on Nash in Game 4, and some Spurs fans are changing their tune on the squeaky-clean Spurs.

“I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to, Strong said, but now I have to believe it because of Horry.

Others agreed.

I was shocked, said Diane Morin, 67, owner of Sports Mania, a store that sells jerseys and cards and other sports collectibles at Rivercenter mall.

Sean Elliott, who played 11 of his 12 seasons with the Spurs and was part of the team’s first championship in 1999, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he’s used to seeing Horry make “great plays and doing the little things but said he was surprised at what transpired at the end of Game 4.

Elliott, however, said he doesn’t believe that a few incidents in a series can define a team — or taint its reputation.

“I don’t think (the Spurs image has been) tarnished, he said. “I think it’s only based on a few games here—a bubble. You have to look at the whole body of work.

And Bowen, Elliott continued, is not dirty player, one who doesn’t want to win that way.

But Horry’s foul, he said, is different.

“You can’t get to the point where (you) cross the line, Elliott said. You can play aggressively, but in (this series) it’s crossed the line a few times.

John F. Murray, a sport performance psychologist in Palm Beach, Fla., said that perhaps the so-far intense series was a factor in Horry’s actions.

“Violence begets violence. Aggression begets aggression,” he said in a telephone interview. “This goes back to stupidity and aggression because of frustration. All (Horry) had to do was grab (Nash). Instead, he took a shot.

For die-hard Spurs fans like Lenoris Carpenter, 52, of San Antonio, seeing the Spurs as the aggressor is a relief, he said.

they needed to be rough, Carpenter said. We’ve been called soft all year and now that we’re roughing up players we’re the bad guys. This is playoff basketball. We didn’t get three championships for nothing.
Watch next year, he continued. They’re going to call the (Spurs) soft tacos. Maybe soft asoodles.

With Roger Clemens’ annual spring return from the baseball afterlife, like Persephone in Greek mythology, and with Mariano Rivera’s recent pitching infirmities, age-old questions arise: When is it time to retire? And just who decides?

This is not merely a sports riddle. When the Washington Post this week invited readers for thoughts to be passed along during the Queen’s current U.S. visit, one response from a self-described senior citizen was, “I urge you … to let the next generation take over the throne. You cannot outlive them, so hang it up!”

Her Majesty is 81 and in the 56th year of her reign. By comparison, Clemens is a mere 44, Rivera 37. And Bernie Williams, who chose a baseball exit rather than subject himself to a rookie-like tryout earlier this year, 38.

But in sports, of course, advanced age arrives relatively soon. And athletes face their own unique set of issues regarding the dreaded career-ectomy.

Giving up the adulation, considerable payday and adrenaline rush of performing under pressure is, to some extent, abandoning their very identity.

“Oftentimes, they’re the last people to know [it's time],” said Florida-based sports psychologist John Murray, who has worked with elite athletes in all the major sports. “Time will tell whether they’ll stay around or not, but when a career’s gone, it’s gone. So why not go for it?”

To Murray, there is “no shame and no embarrassment if you’re not still at your prime.

It’s the striving that makes sports exciting; it’s not just the achievement.”

He finds the latest Clemens comeback attempt “inspiring” and not the least bit surprising.

While many stars have found a certain honor in “going out on top,” purposely leaving the scene at the peak of their powers, plenty of others have acknowledged the difficulty in retiring.

Psychologist Nancy Schlossberg, whose books include “Retire Smart, Retire Happy,” said that such a “high-energy” vocation as professional sports “can become very addictive.”

As a comparison, she cited the Fortune 500 CEO she had interviewed who, in spite of having plenty of money, found retirement was a crashing disappointment. “He found it to be hollow,” she said. “He expected to still be a major player.”

She cautioned against generalizations, but said finding comfort in retirement “has to do with expectations.”

Bill Bradley, when he concluded his Hall of Fame career with the Knicks in 1977 (and before he went into politics), wrote in his book, “Life on the Run,” that athletes approach the last of their playing days “the way old people approach death” – putting finances in order, reminiscing easily, offering advice to the young. They faced, he wrote, the “inexorable terror of living without the game.”

There are, Schlossberg found, retired athletes who suddenly realize they “haven’t saved enough nuts for winter.”

But Murray argued that retirement fears and career-extending motivations are more likely rooted in other causes.

“We always talk about money,” Murray said.

“But these guys have the money already, so there has to be an intangible. They have to have something like love of sport and loving that place in the limelight.”

And, yes, the same can-do attitude that served them so well in finding athletic success also can trick them into believing in their immortality.

“There is a certain amount of blind optimism,” Murray said. “Sports are so tenuous, the highs and lows so dependent on such small factors, you have to be almost blindly optimistic and nurture that personality trait. If not, you’d have given up a long time ago, so that will predispose you to perhaps being oblivious to your demise.”

Pitcher Jim Bouton was seven years past his last major-league game when, attempting to make a comeback as a minor-league knuckleballer, he insisted he never heard a voice telling him he no longer could play. “And I know what I’ll say when I hear it,” he said at the time. “I’ll say, ‘Oh, yes I can.’”

Knight clearly put himself in the former camp of pre-emptive strikes and non-negotiable policy-making. His enormous success in producing winning college basketball teams was matched only by a conviction that he was surrounded by enemies — game officials, fans, reporters, Puerto Rican policemen and various minions to be intimidated at his whim — forever plotting imminent attacks.

Many colleagues and a few sycophants insist that Knight’s private displays of a caring nature and basic respect for fair play balanced the many occasions when he publicly weirded out. But the collateral damage he inflicted by taking his in-your-face, disciplinarian, my-way act beyond the locker room prompt a provocative discussion.

Is winning the only thing in sports? And, even if it is, is dictatorial bullying the only means to the end?

Florida-based sports psychologist John Murray acknowledged that he is “definitely of the view that a coach needs to make the calls and be strong,” recalling the style of former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula. “My point, as a psychologist, is that there are many ways to win and you have to be sophisticated and tap into the individuality of players. But you do have to have a unified message to the team, and you have to have authority, though you don’t need to be a tyrant.”

Every successful coach, argued sports author and commentator John Feinstein, “is a control freak. To me, the question is, what’s authoritarian? When [North Carolina's] Dean Smith blew his whistle to start practice, every player ran to the circle and stood with his toe on the line. But Dean Smith didn’t curse, didn’t raise his voice hardly ever. His methods of authority were very different.”

Feinstein, whose in-depth 1986 study of Knight, “A Season on the Brink,” is one of 23 books he has written on sports, concluded that “all great coaches are authoritative. That’s not the same as authoritarian. To be successful, when you say the sun will rise in the west in the morning, you want your players all getting up and looking west.

“But the only guy in sports I’ve ever met who I’d compare to Knight is John McEnroe. A tormented genius who, in his heart of hearts, wanted to do the right thing. Funny thing: I ran into McEnroe when I was working on ‘Season on the Brink,’ and when I told him I was writing a book on Bobby Knight, McEnroe looked at me and said, ‘Isn’t he kind of crazy?’”

Indiana University professor emeritus Murray Sperber, who has authored several books about the excess of college sports and who received death threats for speaking out against Knight’s behavior at his school prior to Knight’s 2001 firing there, allowed that “all sports sort of fail people” in their “black and white” nature.

“Much of sports comes out of the military. Really, that’s one of the attractions of sports in our society, that it has a sort of clarity in a very complex world. Economists with Nobel Prizes can’t decide if we’re in a recession or not, so I think people love sports for the black and white, as opposed to gray and nuance. And people attracted to sports have that attitude.”

Still, Sperber said he easily could cite a number of fabulously successful coaches who “believed in discipline but never intimidated anyone,” starting with UCLA’s John Wooden. Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne, subject of another Sperber book, “didn’t believe that might is right; he was a short guy, in a time of football line plunges, who believed in speed and deception.”

Harvard University business professor Scott Snook, in challenging his students to think about assumptions of motivation and leadership style, has had them examine the divergent approaches of Knight compared with Knight’s former player and longtime Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.

“If you believe people are fundamentally good,” Snook wrote, leadership will aim at “empowering them, getting obstacles out of the way and setting high goals while maintaining standards … If you believe people are fundamentally bad,” management will be “built primarily around rewards and punishments” and entail a “tight supervision, a controlling … style characterized by a great deal of social distance between leaders and led.”

At St. John’s College of Minnesota, a Division III school, still-active 81-year-old John Gagliardi has coached more college football victories than any other man — including Eddie Robinson, Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno and Bear Bryant — using a decidedly civil system in which players call him by his first name, face no compulsory weightlifting sessions, no tackling in practice and no whistles ever being blown.

Just this month, a point of emphasis to the Giants’ surprising Super Bowl success was how head coach Tom Coughlin extracted better performances from his players by softening his authoritarian style, though Feinstein was among the observers who “don’t buy into the idea, all of a sudden, that Tom Coughlin has become Weeb Ewbank,” the famously casual leader of the Jets’ 1969 Super Bowl champions.

Sperber said it “didn’t seem like [Coughlin had become more tolerant of imperfection] when that guy Tynes missed the field goal [in Green Bay]. That’s a kind of key moment, and to ream the guy out on national TV doesn’t exactly build his confidence.”

Then there is Bill Belichick, victory-obsessed victim of the Giants. “What’s that disease Dustin Hoffman had in ‘Rain Man’?” asked Feinstein, who has known Belichick’s father for years. “That’s Belichick; he’s a genius.”

Although, as Charles Pierce, in an essay for the online magazine Slate, described it, Belichick’s post-Super Bowl lack of social skills produced “a series of public interviews so grim and boorish that they made the collected oeuvre of Bob Knight look like Mardi Gras.”

In six months of “essentially spending day and night” with him in researching “A Season on the Brink,” Feinstein found Knight to be “brilliant. He was often caring, he was a great storyteller, a great dinner companion. He was also a bully, had a hair-trigger temper and was intollerant of anybody who did not see things his way. He loved his players and he abused his players — not physically — but emotionally abused them.

“He was a dictator. The last of the great dictators.”

So now, even as we begin the Year of the Rat, it might be possible to believe, as sports psychologist Murray said, that “Bobby Knight’s style wasn’t very appropriate,” and that the time may have come when the obvious need for discipline and leadership no longer legitimizes what Murray called “a kind of cartoon character.”

Sperber, who debunks what he called the “PR machine” that praised Knight for a high graduation rate — “It was about 44 percent of his players,” Sperber said, “and about 11 percent of his black players” — recalled an accidental, revealing meeting with attendees at a Nike basketball camp in 2000.

Sperber had been in the news for questioning Knight’s priorities at the time and was invited, by a small group of coaches, officials and referees, to hear their stories of Knight: How he was “always on my case;” how, at a banquet, he “called me the most foul-mouthed things, with my kids there;” how he “went out of his way to make fun of me.”

“Remember the movie, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ where they think Jimmy Stewart is gone and talk about what his life meant to all of them?” Sperber said. “This was kind of ‘Anti-Wonderful Life.’ It was more like, ‘It’s a Horrible Life,’ and I was just the catalyst for them to tell their stories.”

That Knight at last appears gone from coaching, having moonwalked away from an ordinary Texas Tech team in mid-season, is not what Sperber would consider a victory over the quintessential bully. “I’m a professor,” he said. “I see it as gray. It’s a historical fact.

“For a segment of the population, he will remain a hero. But ESPN had one of those online things where you can vote: ‘Would you want your son to play for Bobby Knight?’

“I voted ‘no.’ But I’m definitely in the minority.”

Those who do not heed that advice could end up like University of Florida Coach Billy Donovan.

Despite a $27.5 million guaranteed contract, Donovan apparently got cold feet about leaving the University of Florida for the NBA’s Orlando Magic. He reportedly wants his old job back.

If so, Donovan would be the fifth major college basketball coach in five years to accept a more lucrative position, then stun his new team by, in a matter of days, returning to his old team.

While such moves get wide attention when they involve coaches, such turnarounds are not uncommon in the business world, either.

Career counselors often refer to them as “prodigal employees.”

Marleen Basile, director of creative career solutions, a career counseling agency out of Tampa, said it is easy for employees to be swayed by an ego-boosting offer and that before jumping at it they need to take the time to assess their values and what is important.

“People who jump are generally sorry if they make a move before studying their values,” Basile said. “It’s very important that a person think carefully before they make that transition.”

The problem is, being wooed for a high-powered new job can be incredibly seductive.

Just ask former Georgia Tech University basketball coach Bobby Cremins. In 1993, his alma mater, the University of South Carolina, convinced him to save its team from another losing season. He took the job and changed his mind within two days.

Cremins later told the Washington Post he was having a mid-life crisis, so he “had an affair, with South Carolina.”

Whatever the reason, Cremins and Donovan are not alone. Gregg Marshall reneged on a deal with the College of Charleston to stay at Winthrop, (a move referred to as “pulling a Cremins”)and Dan Dakich eschewed West Virginia to stay at Bowling Green. This spring, Dana Altman attended a news conference announcing his hiring at the University of Arkansas. The next day, he was gone, back to his old job at Creighton.

They all went under the microscope for waffling. And for disappointing their fans.

“There might be some repair work necessary because some people might feel some hurt that you left them,” said John F. Murray, a sports psychologist from Palm Beach. “You have to assess the politics.”

Basile, the career counselor, said returning to your old job does not guarantee bliss, or even continued success. “Prodigal” employees who are successful have two things in common: They’ve done good work and they did not burn bridges when they left.

Donovan has that and more working in his favor, Murray said. He was never really gone from Gainesville and he has proven that he is desirable to another organization.

“It’s a compliment to the team that despite the riches thrown at him, he chose to stay,” Murray said. “He has a chance to be a real hero. He could definitely make his mark in history if he can continue being successful.”

Murray’s experience with prodigal employees runs straight up the family tree, to his father, J. Richard “Dick” Murray.

It was an award-winning speech — nothing as grand as back-to-back national basketball championships — that derailed Dick Murray for 18 months.

But that speech got the attention of recruiters at Nova Southeastern University (then simply called Nova University), who wooed him away from his financial development job at Boca Raton Community Hospital, which he helped found.

“They came along and said we want you to be vice president for financial development and it came with a lot of money,” Murray said. “It got to my ego, I had never had that kind of attention before.”

It did not take him long to realize he had made a mistake, he said. The job was not what he had assumed it would be, he said.

So when a hospital board member said they really missed him and wanted him back, Murray, now 80, jumped at the opportunity.

He says he was welcomed back like “Moses coming back from the river.”

Murray says in a small way that must be how Billy Donovan feels today.

You would have thought Sergio Garcia was the next Elvis the way crowds responded to him at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago. The smile, the daring, the vigor, and only 19 — men exchanged high-fives, women swooned, and kids, well, kids adored him most of all. “It looks like they love me,” a grinning Garcia said after narrowly missing birdie putts on 17 and 18 and finishing second to Tiger Woods.

Fans had been waiting for Garcia to win a major since he was 16, when Tom Lehman handed him the Claret Jug at the 1996 British Open and said, “You’re going to hold this someday.” Only Woods was so celebrated so young as Garcia, who played in 28 professional events as an amateur, and whose boyhood home in Castellon, Spain, was strewn with so many gleaming trophies that Jerry Higginbotham, one of Garcia’s early caddies, wondered upon visiting: Where do I sit?

Alas, like any love affair, the ensuing years have tested both sides. Garcia cooled off immediately after Medinah, going winless in 2000, which created such alarm that Robert Erb, a vice president at TaylorMade-Adidas, was moved to defend the company’s young star. “I’m used to seeing athletes have up years and down years,” Erb said. “Sergio will come through fine.”

The public, however, couldn’t help but turn its wandering eye to Woods, who did nothing but win while Garcia displayed the petulance of a jilted ex, once kicking the ground in anger at a match-play event only to lose his shoe, which narrowly missed an official’s head. He found it easiest to blame anyone or anything other than himself.

The excuses started when he was asked about his failure to birdie Medinah’s 17th and replied, “No, I hit a good putt, but the problem is the ball — I think it bounced.” When Woods won the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, Garcia indelicately suggested Woods received preferential tee times.

No one likes a sore loser, but Garcia’s popularity bottomed out on Long Island because of something else: the interminable twitching and regripping in his pre-shot routine. New Yorkers gave him hell for it, and Garcia responded with defiant scowls and his middle finger. In three short years he had descended from toast of the Tour to Public Enemy No. 1.

Garcia, now 27, denies that his popularity has waned. “I wouldn’t say that [the fans have given up on me],” he said at the Nissan Open in February. “But the American crowd is always going to cheer harder for an American as opposed to a European, and in Europe it’s the other way. But it’s just a way of life, the way it should be.” Still, there is no denying he has not lived up to his fans’ expectations. He has come nowhere near his stated goal upon turning pro to be the No. 1 player in the world, or of winning the money titles on the European and PGA tours in the same year, as he boldly discussed in 2002. He has eliminated the endless waggles, but just once every two years, at the Ryder Cup (where his career record is 14-4-2), does he outshine his American nemesis, Woods.

Which begs the question: Can Garcia thrive without fan support?

“What you’re describing is called ’social facilitation’ or ‘audience effect,’” says John F. Murray, a Palm Beach, Fla., sports psychologist who works with tennis players. “It was the subject of the first study ever done in the field, by [Norman] Triplett, who looked at audience effect on cycling speed, and it’s been replicated many times.”

Audience effect explains home-field advantage and why Vince Spadea, a mid-level pro and Murray client, regularly makes the semifinals of the ATP event in his hometown of Delray Beach, Fla., despite only occasionally excelling in other tournaments. “Vince has got a little flair to him,”Murray says. “He loves to hear his name shouted out.”

Garcia, too, is joined at his very soul to the crowd. He cried when Team Europe was peppered with insults in Boston and lost the ‘99 Ryder Cup, fed off a vocal (and supportive) New York gallery when he won the 2001 Buick Classic in Westchester County, and let another gang of garrulous Gothamites drive him batty at Bethpage. Like Springsteen in spikes, the more love Garcia does or doesn’t feel, the more it shows in his performance. “When he gets the crowd going and on his side,” says 1999 Cup teammate Jesper Parnevik, “he is unstoppable.”

Whether or not a U.S. gallery will ever get behind Garcia again like it did at the ‘99 PGA Championship is an open question, especially after all that’s gone down since that magical day. The petulance has not helped (nor have the missed opportunities), and then there was his fiery proclamation after Europe thrashed the U.S. at the K Club last year: ” There’s nothing sweeter than beating the Americans.”

“If he keeps whipping our behind in the Ryder Cup,” says Paul Azinger, the 2008 U.S. captain, “the American crowd will never pull for him.”

After a winless 2006, it’s unclear whether Garcia is getting closer to or further from his goals. He insists he’s getting closer — “If I wasn’t then I’d be in trouble,” he says — but is he really?

“I had some disappointments in majors,” says Tom Lehman, who turned pro in 1982, 14 years before winning his first major, the British Open. “But I knew I was moving closer, that it was only a matter of time, that one of these days was going to be my day. Did I say that to the media? No. But I told my wife. Does Sergio feel like he’s running up against a wall that’s too high to climb? In his quietest moments only he knows.”

At the British Open at Hoylake last summer, Garcia shot a third-round 65 to earn a final-round pairing with the supremely confident Woods. Though never questioning his talent, pundits wondered how Garcia would hold up stripped of the armor that playing for team and country imbues in him.

Sure enough, just one stroke behind to begin the day, Garcia did his fragile-flower act for the first 45 minutes of play. He missed two short par putts in the first three holes and shot 39 on the front nine (10 shots higher than the previous day). In psychologist Murray’s world it was a case of “habit strength,” because the whole thing was eerily reminiscent of Bethpage, when, paired with Woods for the final round, Garcia obligingly went out in 40.

When he was comfortably out of contention at Hoylake, Garcia started making putts, shot 34 on the back nine and turned in a 73. It wasn’t the crowd’s fault. If anything, Garcia is more popular in Britain than America. But it wasn’t Garcia’s, either. “I can’t even count how many good putts I hit that didn’t go in,” he said. Still, by rolling over for Woods yet again, Garcia had solidified the public’s sentiment that he just didn’t have it in him to hang with the world’s No. 1.

“Sometimes in the majors he’s trying too hard, because everyone’s expecting him to win one,” says Parnevik, who along with his wife Mia are like surrogate parents to Garcia. “As soon as he wins that first one I think he’s going to win many, kind of like Phil did. Twenty-seven is not old in golf. Tiger — it could be once in history to come out and do what he’s done before 30.”

No one looks good next to Woods, but Garcia’s short game invites scrutiny. He was 158th on Tour in putting last year, and while statistics can be deceiving, he has missed many of the most significant putts of his career, from Medinah, twice (he tied for third at the ‘06 PGA but never seriously threatened Woods), to Bethpage to Hoylake.

“I don’t think he’s a bad putter,” says Higginbotham, who caddied for Garcia at the ‘99 PGA. “Sergio makes his birdie on 18, we go into a playoff and maybe he wins. He’s very, very streaky.”

Team Sergio is reluctant to provide much information on Garcia’s training methods, but one instructor who spoke on the condition of anonymity says he worked to modify the Spaniard’s putting stroke last offseason. Garcia moved away from the ball, with his eyes no longer directly above it but slightly inside the line, and changed the rhythm of his stroke, becoming less slow and methodical since those adjectives don’t describe the rest of his game. He also switched back to a crosshanded grip this year.

“It feels like my stroke is more consistent that way,” Garcia says. “I think I’m going to stay cross-handed for quite a while.”

“I’ve seen him go left-hand low and all this other stuff,” Higginbotham continues. “His posture is beautiful. He’s got the lightest grip pressure I’ve ever seen. It’s a confidence thing with him.”

Garcia thrives when he can play aggressively, as at the Ryder Cup, where the format’s strategic differences free him up to fire at will without much to pay in possible consequences. For one thing, he’s got two extra sets of eyes to help him read greens, and there are other reasons to be bold. If he misses, his teammate can bail him out. If he misses twice, he can pick up, barring a concurrent collapse by his opponent. There are no four-putts in match play, which is how one of the Tour’s shakiest putters magically transforms into Ben Crenshaw.

EUROPE’S ace is more effective on approach shots in the Ryder Cup too. Firing at flags with impunity during the K Club victory last fall, he looked like anything but the guy who’s been drifting away from pins on Tour, with his average approach shot ending up a pedestrian 30′4″ from the hole in 2005, and 35′8″ in 2006.

Says Lehman, “If he can understand what allows him to perform and putt so well in a Ryder Cup … whatever the reason, he’s able to be 100 percent completely focused and 100 percent relaxed. That combination of focus and calm is what gives great players their greatness.”

It’s a combination that can be cracked, says psychologist Murray. He remembers one South American tennis player who was unbeatable when he played for his country but far from it the rest of the time. The cure: visualization.

“What I did with the guy was use imagery that he was in the Davis Cup when he was actually playing in Delray Beach,” Murray explains. “He almost beat Agassi.”

Off the course, Garcia hasn’t changed. He is very close to his family — dad Victor still travels the circuit with him — and he’s as popular as ever with the ladies. Last year he began dating 24-year old Morgan Leigh-Norman, daughter of Greg. Garcia is such a reliably chipper locker-room presence that even rah-rah Americans like Jerry Kelly and Lehman call him a friend. Maybe Azinger will come around later.

Mark Bowden, an ABC cameraman who got to know Garcia through the Tour, was on the road when he got a call from his wife back home in Boise, Idaho, a few years ago. There was a beer truck in front of their house, and she was certain the driver was lost. Turned out he was delivering 10 cases of Michelob Ultra, courtesy of Garcia, to mark the birth of the Bowdens’ son.

Indeed, it’s a stretch to cast the Castellon kid as an enemy. The problem is that his popularity or lack there of is of such great consequence to him.

“He’s got to create that [crowd] love in his own mind,” says Justin Rose of England, who is Garcia’s neighbor at Florida’s gated Lake Nona Golf Club. “At the end of the day you’ve got to accept that you’re not only competing against Tiger but all the people who root for him as well. You’ve got to be in your own little bubble out there and create whatever feeling you need to create.”

Garcia laughs at the Springsteen analogy, and while he admits that he thrives on the crowd, he adds a caveat. “At the end of the day,” he says, “I’m there for myself.”

Truth be told, he has been in that bubble, and played oblivious to the crowd. It was the final round of the 2004 Masters, and Garcia, fed up with being written off by the press, started to resemble Woods. He channeled his anger, using it to make putt after putt, birdie after birdie. Playing partner Jerry Kelly couldn’t figure out what he’d done. Had he coughed in the guy’s backswing? Walked in his line? Garcia signed for a 66, then stormed to the media pavilion. “It’s nice to see how fair you guys are,” he fumed.

Kelly didn’t have a chance to talk to Garcia for several weeks afterward. Finally the two spoke, and Garcia said his anger wasn’t personal. “He was getting bashed up in the media,” Kelly says. “And he was pretty unhappy that he wasn’t having the major that he thought he should be having, again. I think that really clicked him out of whatever funk he was in, not that it was much of a funk.” Garcia tied for fourth, but he had clearly harnessed that me-against-the-world vibe that so motivates Woods.

“That was weird; that was a different situation,” Garcia says. “I’m not going to talk about that. It’s way in the past.” It was El Nino out of his element. As psychologist Murray says, “A lot of people need encouragement. They need rah-rah.”

The rah-rah will return only when Garcia can prove that he’s capable of playing like the cold, impenetrable closer American fans ditched him for. If he can grit his teeth and enter that bubble for four important days, the public will want him more than ever when he emerges. After his transcendent day at the 2004 Masters, all that remains is to rediscover that bubble and settle in like he owns the place. The hell with the rah-rah.