Just 16 months after he finally won a first Major title at the 74th attempt, Garcia’s game is at crisis point.
The 2017 Masters champion’s dismal performance at the USPGA meant he has missed the cut in all four Majors this year for the first time in his career.
It is not just the Majors — he has made it through to the weekend just four times in his last 11 starts, with only one top ten.
He needed a good performance at Bellerive to move up the FedEx Cup rankings and ensure there would be no problems holding onto his PGA Tour card for next year.
Garcia, 38, has played only 13 of the minimum 15 events.
He has qualified for the play-offs comfortably every year, so fitting in two more should not have been a problem — especially as the Ryder Cup counts towards the tally.
But Garcia is well down the Ryder Cup points list and unless he shows some form in the next few weeks, European captain Thomas Bjorn will find it hard to make him one of his four wildcard picks.
That puts even more pressure on Garcia to play well at the Wyndham Championship this week, a tournament he added to his schedule after his USPGA flop.
He is 131st in the FedEx Cup standings and needs to climb into the top 125 to qualify for the first of the play-offs, the Northern Trust tournament in New Jersey next week.
If he does not make the line-up for that event there is nowhere left for Garcia to play in America this season, so it would be the Ryder Cup or nothing for his 15th start.
And that would put Bjorn in an even more awkward position.
There are plenty of other contenders for his wildcard picks. Henrik Stenson and Paul Casey are both in the world’s top 20 yet not among the eight automatic qualifiers.
Neither are Thomas Pieters — a rookie sensation at Hazeltine and tied for sixth at the USPGA — or Rafael Cabrera-Bello.
He is 11th on the world points list after his top-ten finish at Bellerive and at one point his final round 64 looked like moving him into the top eight in place of Casey.
In the end it was Ian Poulter who edged past his fellow Englishman but his hold on an automatic spot is precarious.
Scotsman Russell Knox — winner of the Irish Open in July — and England’s Matt Fitzpatrick, who played in the 2016 Ryder Cup, are also in with a shout.
But the player most likely to push out Poulter is ninth-placed Thorbjorn Olesen.
The Dane has added this week’s Nordea Scandinavian Masters to his schedule to try to pick up a few more qualifying points.
He will also play in the final qualifying event, Made in Denmark, at the end of this month.
But if Garcia fails again this week, Bjorn may tell him he must be there too to boost his wildcard hopes.
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