Sergio Garcia responds to official's warning after miserable day of golf

The R&A was forced to deploy additional marshals during Sergio Garcia's second round at British Open Qualifying after the LIV Golf star had complained about crowd control.

Garcia was forced to turn to qualifying for the second successive year, as the Spaniard continues to see his name drift down the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) following his move to LIV. Returning to West Lancashire G.C., Garcia was keen to get off well in the 36-hole qualifier but endured a staggered start in tricky conditions.

Unsurprisingly the former Masters champion drew in a large crowd on the Wirral, with hundreds of golf fans following him down the fairways, however, this soon turned out to be a problem for the Fireballs captain.

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Garcia was left waiting on the tee box at the eighth for some time during his morning round, before hitting his eventual drive into trouble down the left. His group was then informed that they had been given an official warning for slow play, a sanction Garcia felt was unfair.

He appeared to point his finger at the lack of crowd control for the reasoning behind their slow round, telling a tournament official: "It needs controlling better," venting his frustrations. Having played his opening nine holes in one-over-par, Garcia soon settled himself to post three-under on the back, leaving him two-under at the halfway stage.

Amid the complaints earlier in the morning, The R&A confirmed that they would add more officials to the Spaniard's group in an attempt to contain the ever-growing crowd. This was not the first time Garcia had played in front of a bumper qualifier crowd after similar numbers turned out for his attempt at the same venue last summer.

Like 2023 however, the LIV golfer fell to the same fate after failing to book his return to the final major of the year, missing out on qualification by two shots. Addressing the crowd trouble earlier in the day in the aftermath, he said: "When you have 2,000 people following us with no ropes, nothing.

"The marshals were trying to do the best job they could do but obviously we had to stop pretty much on every tee for two to three minutes to hit our tee shots because people were walking in front of the tee and on the fairway. Unless we wanted to start hitting people we couldn’t hit. I don’t think they took that into account and that was unfortunate. It made us rush.

"On a day like today when the conditions are so tricky and you might need a little of bit of extra time here and there it doesn’t help out. Because of that I made a couple of bogeys that might cost me getting to Troon.”