AUGUSTA, Ga. -- While Sergio Garcia stalked a lengthy birdie putt on the 14th green Friday afternoon, a group of his relatives and friends stood about 50 yards away, gathered underneath a hand-operated scoreboard that showed him at even par for the Masters Tournament.
"Are you sure that's right?" his fiancée, Angela Akins, called up to the scoreboard operator. "Are you sure he isn't 2 under?"
He assured her that, yes, the green 0 signifying even par was indeed correct.
Less than a minute later, he changed it to a red 2.
The confusion had started four holes earlier, when Garcia hooked his tee shot on the par-4 10th hole.
Not knowing where it had landed, he hit a provisional tee shot. Once he walked down the fairway, a forecaddie informed him that his initial drive hit a tree on the left side and the ball caromed into the short grass -- a long way from his intended target, but safely in play.
The only problem? The scorers at Augusta National didn't know that. They didn't realize his first ball had been found. Which is why, four holes later, his posted score was 2 strokes higher than it actually should have been.
"The most important thing is I knew where I stood," explained Garcia, who finished with a 3-under 69 that left him at 4 under and in a four-way tie for the lead going into the weekend. "It was a little bit of a funky hole for us. Obviously, I didn't hit a good tee shot. I got lucky, I have to say, I got very lucky with the bounce there ... [Playing partner] Shane [Lowry] hit two balls to the left and we were looking for one; we couldn't find it. We found the second one. So we are all dressed light-color pants and blue sweater, so I can see why they might have made the mistake."
For a guy who once intimated that higher powers were working against him at a major championship, unwittingly losing two strokes would've been a needlessly bad break.
It also showed an advanced maturity level that hasn't always been evident. A younger Garcia might've gotten flustered. He might've whined and stomped his feet and gotten thrown off from the task at hand. The 37-year-old version simply shrugged, confident in knowing the scoreboards were wrong.
"It was fine," he said afterward, clearly unperturbed by the situation.
Garcia has infamously lost majors in every conceivable fashion. He's been vanquished in a playoff. He's flailed when holding the lead. He's rallied when trailing, only to wind up agonizingly close.
This week marks his 74th major appearance. He has finished in the top five a dozen times -- more than any other active player who has never won.
Five years ago, he trudged off Augusta National after a third-round 75 and admitted, "I'm not good enough. ... I don't have the thing I need to have. In 13 years, I've come to the conclusion that I need to play for second or third place."
Garcia has since recanted that stance, explaining to anyone who will listen that he's capable of winning a major, but his life won't be forever incomplete without one.
"I was frustrated," he explained of his prior outlook. "I probably didn't accept things as well as I should have. And I've shown myself many times after that, that I can contend and I can truly feel like I can win. Not only one, but more than one."
Even so, it's hard to imagine the ghosts don't continue to haunt him.
This might not be his greatest chance for major fortune -- not yet, at least -- but it is his latest, another in a long line of previously unrequited opportunities.
"Having a chance is the best thing -- and winning it, I'm sure it's amazing," he said. "But for me, I feel so fortunate that I've been able to be healthy, that I've been able to play so many majors in a row. I don't even know how many there are, but so many majors in a row and giving myself a lot of chances to win them. That for me is already a win. [If] we can put the cherry on top, that would be even better."
It has often been suggested that Garcia's long-awaited first major victory will happen only when everyone least expects it. Well, everyone might have expected it least this week. The focus entering the tournament surrounded the injured Dustin Johnson, and the revenge-minded Jordan Spieth, and the snakebit Rory McIlroy.
Garcia was just as overlooked as his tee shot on the 10th hole, the one that was scored incorrectly for a while. The one that hardly fazed him as he continued climbing the Masters leaderboard.