Masters champion Sergio Garcia featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated

Sergio Garcia will grace the cover of Sports Illustrated after winning The Masters.

It took 19 holes on Sunday, but 37-year-old Spaniard Sergio Garcia was able to exorcise the demons of majors past and don the green jacket as Masters champion.

An accomplishment like that lands you on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Garcia needed 73 appearances to win a major tournament, most all-time. His Ryder Cup teammate Martin Kaymer credits the drought being on the PGA Tour at the wrong time.

“Poor Sergio… It wasn’t fair to be made into Tiger’s rival—who could live up to that? I think it damaged him a little bit,” Kaymer said.

This year it was a different Sergio at Augusta. While fans braced for a familiar collapse on Sunday’s back nine, Garcia showed a confidence absent for so many tournaments.. Alan Shipnuck writes that the resolve demonstrated may have had nothing to do with golf at all.

“By the time García arrived at Augusta last week he was largely a forgotten figure, despite a lopsided win two months earlier against a good field in Dubai,” Shipnuck wrote in his cover story for Sports Illustrated. “But he had a secret weapon: He was in love again, this time with Angela Akins, 31, a former Golf Channel talent who now wears an engagement ring the size of a satellite dish.”

Whatever the reason, fans saw something from Garcia they had never seen before. Now one of golf’s most polarizing figures has a championship in a major tournament on his resume. Brandt Snedeker, who finished tied for 27th at August, thinks that’s a good thing.

“I think he deserved to win a major,” Snedeker said. “I feel like the game is in a better place with him winning a major instead of the other way around.”