By Kent Gray
Much has been made of how the past two Omega Dubai Desert Classic champions kicked on to breakthrough major wins at the U.S. Masters. But for Sergio Garcia, the “rub of the green” streak is purely “coincidence”.

With that said, the 38-year-old Spaniard does concede the manner of his victory at Emirates Golf Club last year had a major bearing on his career year.

“For me, last year, winning here against Henrik, with Henrik playing well, and myself playing well, and kind of keeping him off my back throughout the whole day, I think that was the most important thing mentally,” said Garcia who carded rounds of 65-67-68-69 to edge the Swede by three shots last January.

“That helped me a lot. It gave me more confidence as I went on through the year.”

After winning the Asian Tour’s Singapore Open last week to start 2018 in perfect fashion, Garcia returns to defend the Dallah with understated swagger. He certainly doesn’t feel any extra pressure to replicate the performance.

“I think that every week, we come out here and we try to do our best, play the best we can every single week, and that’s the same thing I’m going to do this week,” he said.

“I’m going to keep trying hard, keep challenging myself to achieve things, and, you know, hopefully we play as well as we did last year and we have another chance at winning again here. You know, it would be great, but we’ll see what the week will bring us.”

What he is anticipating is fun on and around the Majlis’ greens.

“The course looks great and the greens are rolling very nicely. They are quite firm, firmer than they were last year already on Wednesday. It’s going to be interesting to see how we can cope with that.”

Garcia might be a focal figure in Dubai but it didn’t stop him being quizzed on the return of his old nemesis Tiger Woods to the PGA Tour this week.

”Yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see. I don’t know, but in my opinion, it’s a big question mark to see how he’s going to be able to do physically. I think that he looked pretty good at the Hero Challenge. But he has looked good at the Hero Challenge, and then, you know, he hasn’t lasted too long.

“So hopefully he’s able to get in a bit of a rhythm when it comes down to playing tournaments. But nobody knows. I think I can say that probably he doesn’t even know how his back and his body is going to cope with everything that goes on with playing tournaments and practicing. So we’ll see.”

How important do you think Tiger is to golf? Do we need him?

“Yeah, of course we need him. He’s done so much for the game. If he’s not there, will the game of golf fall apart? I don’t think so. But obviously like I always say, the more sugar, the sweeter.”