The charismatic Spaniard is leading a major at the halfway point. And Tiger Woods is a daunting seven shots behind.
"I'd rather be leading ... that's for sure," said Garcia, who followed his brilliant 6-under-par 65 in the opening round at Carnoustie with a workmanlike 71 on Friday. "I'm pretty happy the way I'm standing right now."
Garcia is probably the best player around who's yet to win a major, and plenty of guys with less talent have claimed one of golf's biggest prizes. But this is shaping up as the weekend where El Nino finally silences all of his detractors.
A new belly putter _ with a long shaft that sticks in his gut, helping to steady his stroke _ seems to have resolved his biggest problem, those shaky attempts from 4 and 6 and 8 feet away that often separate the champions from the pretenders.
"I just feel a bit more comfortable than I did with the little putter," Garcia said. "Under pressure, I think I can put a better stroke on it."
If Garcia keeps making those kind of putts, it will be difficult for anyone to catch him. Especially Woods, who shot a 3-over 74 in the second round and found himself with a lot of shots to make up in the quest for his third straight Open title.
Woods got off to a most uncharacteristic start Friday. He pulled out an iron for his first shot of the day, intending to play it safe with the tee shot. Instead, he yanked it far left, the ball hopping into the Barry Burn at a spot where the famous stream rarely comes into play.
"It was such a poor shot because the commitment wasn't there," said Woods, who wound up with a double bogey.
The opening hole set the tone for the rest of Woods' round. He was merely hanging on, as two shots came within inches of sliding into perilous pot bunkers, while another was headed for the burn until it rattled around in a small cluster of trees and dropped safely in the middle of them.
"Still not out of it," Woods insisted, even though 18 players separated him from the top of the leaderboard.
Garcia also hit a bad shot on the very first hole. His 9-iron approach skidded into a nasty lie in the rough right of the green.
What followed was a chip that would have made fellow Spaniard and short-game genius Seve Ballesteros proud. It skirted the edge of a bunker and rolled to tap-in range for an unlikely par that brightened Garcia's mood.
He took another step toward validating his promise, grinding his way through chilly breezes with birdies on both par 5s and only a couple of mistakes that put him two shots clear of K.J. Choi.
Garcia has contended for majors since he was a teenager, but the 27-year-old Spaniard looks as though he might finally have figured them out. Garcia wasn't at his best in the second round, but he was good enough.
