Sergio Garcia, a past Masters champion who knows Augusta National as well as anyone, turned the second tee into a demolition zone on Sunday, smashing his driver and tearing up the tee box during the final round. The club ended up mangled, the tee box scarred, and Garcia was left to play the rest of his round without a usable driver as stunned patrons looked on.
Tee-box tantrum
According to CBS Sports, Garcia’s troubles started when his tee shot at the par-5 second hole veered into a fairway bunker. The Spaniard responded by slamming his driver into the turf, carving a sizeable divot out of the middle of the tee box. He then drove the club into a cooler at the back of the tee, snapping the shaft and effectively taking the driver out of play for the final 16 holes.
CBS Sports noted that the outburst came immediately after a bogey on the opening hole and quickly became a talking point, given Garcia’s history at Augusta and his status as a former champion.
What the broadcast showed
As described in Fox 7 Austin’s recap of the broadcast, the damage was not subtle. The station reports that the impact left the driver head dangling from the broken shaft before Garcia pulled it off entirely, then moved on to finish the hole. He managed to salvage a par on No. 2, but Fox 7 Austin says he followed that with bogeys at the third and fourth holes, a rough stretch without his primary club off the tee.
The pairing did eventually find a lighter note. Fox 7 Austin recounts that later in the round, Garcia briefly picked up fellow Spaniard Jon Rahm’s bag while Rahm’s caddie was dealing with a bunker shot, a small moment of levity in an otherwise tense day. Those scenes all came straight from the live TV coverage, per Fox 7 Austin.
What the rules allow
The meltdown created a second problem for Garcia, and this one involved the rule book. The Rules of Golf say a player may keep using a damaged club or attempt to repair it during the round, but in most cases cannot replace a club that the player broke in anger or through misuse. Golf.com explains that Rule 4.1 was updated to spell out how damaged clubs can be used or fixed, while limiting replacement to situations where an outside influence causes the damage. In other words, snapping your own driver out of frustration does not entitle you to a fresh one.
Not an isolated pattern
This is not Garcia’s first run-in with his temper. He was disqualified from the 2019 Saudi International after deliberately damaging multiple greens, an incident detailed by Sky Sports. More recently, he infamously split a driver in half during the final round of the 2025 Open Championship, as reported by ESPN.
Those earlier episodes brought public scrutiny and apologies from Garcia. Sunday’s Augusta outburst now joins that list, another high-profile reminder that his shotmaking brilliance sometimes travels with a short fuse.
