What's with the waggles?

The experts are split on the cause and its effect on the infuriating pre-shot action Sergio Garcia has adopted, writes Julian Geraghty.

IF IT takes me a hundred regrips, it's all right I'm not going to hit a shot until I'm ready," Sergio Garcia said. "If it annoys you, don't look until you hear the click."

That was Garcia's advice to reporters last January in Maui, after he had won the Mercedes Championship with a four-round score of 274 and an aggregate of more than 4,000 fidgety, finicky, seemingly compulsive regrippings of his golf clubs. For reasons that were clear to no one, least of all Garcia himself, the 22-year-old Spaniard had in June of last year adopted a pre-shot routine based on the principles of Chinese water torture. A couple of conventional waggles, a swivel or two of the head to fix the target and then the regrips four times, five times ... eight, nine, 10 times ... 16, 17, 18 ... 25, 26, 27 ... 31, 32 times....

There are two schools of thought regarding Garcia's pre-shot routine. The first dismisses it as a harmless relaxation ritual, not unlike that of the basketball player who dribbles the ball and spins it in his hands before attempting a free throw. The second respectfully suggests that Garcia is a nutcase who is only a few thousand regrips shy of being fitted for a long-sleeved tunic with white straps and buckles.

The latter view was popular with the amateur psychologists who lined the fairways at last month's US Open at Bethpage Black, where Garcia finished fourth behind fidget-free Tiger Woods, placid Phil Mickelson and stolid Jeff Maggert. Shouts of "Hit it, Waggle Boy!" were heard as Garcia dithered over the ball, and some spectators tried to get into his head by counting out loud as he regripped: ".. Fourteen! Fifteen! Sixteen! ... "At one point Garcia raised his right hand to the hecklers indicating with a finger, according to some, that they should start again at one.

Half-convinced ourselves that Garcia might be suffering from some sort of anxiety disorder remember a few years ago, at Wentworth, when he took off one of his shoes and hurled it down the fairway? we spoke with Denise Egan, who is the clinical coordinator for Massachusetts General Hospital's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Institute. Egan, while claiming no expertise in sports fidgeting, explained that a clinical compulsion is an irresistible impulse to do something over and over again, regardless of the rationality of the motive. An obsession is a recurrent and persistent thought or image that is intrusive and inappropriate. "One common obsession is germs," Egan said. "Some people worry that they'll die if they touch something."

The obsessed person, upset by the disturbing thought, performs some act or ritual to relieve the anxiety-washing his hands until they are raw, for instance, to kill germs. The compulsion, in other words, is driven by an obsession. "Lots of people have little obsessions and compulsions," Egan said, "but you don't have obsessive-compulsive disorder unless the behaviour interferes with your ability to function." Garcia's regripping would be a cause for concern, for example, if he couldn't hit the ball within the 60 seconds allowed under PGA Tour rules.

That is not the case with Garcia. Since introducing his regripping routine to less-than-rave reviews, he has won one Tour event and one tournament each in Europe and South Africa, finished in the top 10 in three major Championships, tied for second at the Tour Championship, vaulted to fifth in the World Ranking and started dating tennis star Martina Hingis. "Then I'd say the regripping is functional for him," Egan said. "It might be bugging other people, but it seems as if it's serving him OK." Garcia's routine gets an even stronger endorsement from sports psychologist and author Bob Rotella, who serves as mind-game coach to Davis Love III, Nick Price and other touring pros. "Do people not understand greatness?" Rotella asks. "Sergio's regrip is very intuitive, instinctive. It keeps tension from getting into his body and maintains the softness in his hands and arms. He's a very visual player, and he's not going to hit the ball until he sees the shot clearly in his head. That's his genius. It's like a pianist hearing the music in his head, and a moment later the notes come out of his fingers."

To support his contention that the waggle is the solution, not the problem, Rotella points out that Garcia leads the Tour in total driving, a statistic combining distance and accuracy, and regrips more on the tee than on any other shot.

Garcia is not the first touring pro to raise eyebrows with a preshot routine. Hubert Green, who won a US Open, a PGA Championship and 17 other Tour events between 1971 and '85, bobbed his head and squirmed so much over the ball that Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray said he looked like a drunk trying to find a keyhole in the dark. Our own Fred Daly, who won the British Open in 1947, was famous for placing and replacing his putter dozens of times before striking the ball. Then there was Jack Nicklaus, who stood motionless over his putts until ivy started growing up his legs. (After years of being fined and criticised for slow play, Nicklaus picked up his pace.)

Another weird but effective preshot routine belonged to Frank Beard, the Tour's leading money winner in 1969. He soled the club between his feet and the ball and then slowly worked it into position behind the ball with a series of gentle taps. "It would be easy to describe it as a nervous habit," Beard says, "but I didn't feel nervous. It wasn't a tension breaker as much as it was a rhythm starter."

It wasn't a problem, either, until people asked Beard to explain why he did it. "I had no answer. I couldn't remember not doing it."

Beard knows one thing for certain: Garcia is not the first world-class player to compulsively regrip the club. When Beard played at Florida in the late 1950s, All-America golfer and law student Dan Sikes regripped so often that some suspected he was reviewing legal arguments in his head. "One day we counted," Beard says, "and it was amazing. Dan regripped the club 19 times, and it was 19 every time." When the players asked Sikes about his gripping fetish, he said, "I know I do it, but I don't know how many times." Sikes went on to have a successful Tour career, but not until he reduced his regripping to one or two quick squeezes.

Garcia would like to cut back too, but so far his efforts have failed. In May, when he forced himself to hit the ball after a couple of waggles and only a few regrips, he played a stretch of eight rounds in 22 over par, missed two cuts and finished 73rd at the Memorial. In June, with the waggle restored, he shot par or better in 10 of 12 rounds and finished 12th, fourth and 20th.

At the Canadian Skins Game two weeks ago, however, he shortened his routine again, never exceeding six regrips and he won with eight skins. "I've been playing so much I haven't had time to work on it," Garcia said. "I'm trying to shorten it up, yes, and I feel really comfortable with my set up now. It feels great."

His Canadian Skins opponents needled him gently John Daly counted Garcia's regrips in a stage whisper on the 1st tee but few Tour players openly condemn Garcia's preshot routine. "It's a habit he doesn't like," says Vijay Singh, "but Sergio is a great feel player, and he plays best when he feels comfortable."

At the US Open, during which Garcia played with Woods in the final pairing on Sunday, he looked the other way whenever Garcia was over the ball.

His critics predict that the regripping habit will eventually fray his nerves and damage his game. They point to an incident last December at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in Sun City, South Africa, where Garcia, facing a shot over water, regripped more than 50 times before backing off and muttering that he couldn't "hit the fucking ball."

They point to the heckling at Bethpage, which may have distracted Garcia enough to have prevented him from overtaking Woods. And they point to the pitiable Cobie Legrange, the 1969 Dunlop British Masters champion whose career ended in the early '70s after he "got stuck" and simply could not take the club back from the ball.

"If I were Sergio's coach, I would be looking for some way to stop it," says Beard. "If it's not arrested, it can only get worse."

Peter Allis, the traditional traditionalist, is of the same mind. "I do worry about his gripping and regripping habit," he said. "Whether it will ultimately shorten his career at the very top level, I'm not sure. Somebody might whack him first, because I'm afraid he can also be a bumptious little wotsit."

The folks who study psyches for a living say there is little danger that the regripping alone will cause Garcia to lose his grip. The bigger worry is that media doubters and tournament hecklers will get him thinking about his busy hands instead of focusing on the shot. That could seriously undermine his game.

"If his game tanks," says Mass General's Egan, "it will be because we've taken away something that helps him function."

Rotella goes even further, saying that the problem lies not with Garcia's waggle but with the golf world's penchant for conformity. "In basketball it's cool if you're unique and different. In golf, for some reason, people hate it."

Hate is a strong word. Let's just say we're annoyed.

(c) Time Inc 2002, from Sports Illustrated magazine.