Garcia aims to tame Tiger - and conquer Europe as well

Sergio Garcia, at the tender age of 21, has set himself two towering targets for next year. "I want to be number one in America and win their money list," says the world number six. "But I am playing 11 tournaments that qualify for Europe's Order of Merit and I see no reason why I should not win it as well. I want to be number one on both sides of the Atlantic; it is my main goal."

Garcia spoke quietly but confidently as he outlined ambitions that have been far beyond Severiano Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo and Jose Maria Olazabal, all of whom have competed on both tours in the past.

Olazabal, in 1994, the year he first won the US Masters and followed it with a World Series victory, came closest, finishing fourth in Europe and seventh - despite playing only eight events - in the US.

Four of the young Spaniard's Order of Merit events in 2002 will be the majors, three the lucrative World Golf Championships and the remaining four, with the possible exception of the Spanish Open, tournaments with huge prize money.

"If I could win a major, a WGC event and one other counting event," he says, "that could be good enough for the Order of Merit." This season that would have netted him in the region of £2.5 million sterling, some £700,000 more than the Order of Merit winner, the US Open champion Retief Goosen.

To be top in America, of course, Garcia has first to topple Tiger Woods, but he is far from intimidated. "Of course he is catchable," he says. "I strongly feel I am closer to him than before. Part of it is the ball - it is going so far his length is not the advantage it was - but part of it is his own fault. He has reset the bar and we are all having to work harder to get better. That is thanks to him."

Garcia does not go along with the David Duval theory that Woods, who won only the Masters this past year, expended all his mental energies in taking that major, his fourth in a row. "I don't think Tiger is like that," the Spaniard says. "He would never win anything and then say, 'I'm done, that's it.' After the Masters he was dying to win the US Open, the Open and the PGA so that he could say, 'I've won seven on the trot.' "

Garcia himself had what, by pre-Tiger standards, was a sensational year. In winning twice on the US Tour he established himself firmly in the world's top 10. Then he went to Europe and in Paris, at the Lanτome Trophy, he was four behind the leader, Goosen, with four to play but won it with birdies at all four holes. And he went on to win the Million Dollar Challenge in Sun City, chipping in to beat Ernie Els in a play-off. All that and he is not 22 until January 9.

"It has been a good year for me," Garcia admits. "I have learned a lot." He feels that he has more shots, that he can "work" the ball either left or right at will, under pressure, and he is learning how to control the huge amount of backspin he gets when playing to the usually soft greens he encounters on the US tour.

If he sounds cocky, it was not said like that and Garcia, in essence, is not a cocky kid. He was talking while taking part in a relaxed tin-pot tournament on an Alicante course only so that he could be with the friends he had grown up with.

He will need all the relaxation he can get if he is to get even close to what seems an impossible dream.