Michaux: At long last, could this be a grown-up Sergio Garcia’s time?

Sergio Garcia has not been around forever, it only seems like it.

Garcia is playing in his 71st consecutive major championship since the 1999 British Open. He’s posted top 10 finishes in nearly one third of his 73 career starts, including four runner-ups.

“I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to be healthy, that I’ve been able to play so many majors in a row,” Garcia said. “I don’t even know how many there are, but so many majors in a row and giving myself a lot of chances to win them. That for me is already a win, and then, you know, we can put the cherry on top, that would be even better.”

That cherry on top has proven elusive in the 18 years since the boyish Garcia skipped after Tiger Woods in a duel at the 1999 PGA Championship. Had Garcia caught him, they would have stood all square with one major apiece. Woods would win 14, while Garcia is still searching for No. 1.

He’s once again in prime shape in a four-way tie for the lead at the halfway point of the Masters.

“Being a part of a major, it’s exciting already,” Garcia said. “Having a chance is the best thing, and winning it, I’m sure it’s amazing.”

Garcia has been playing golf since he was 3 years old. By 12, he was club champion at Spain’s Mediterraneo Club where his father was the head pro. By 13, he was a scratch golfer. At 14, he made the cut in the European Tour’s Mediterranean Open. By 15, he was the youngest European Amateur champion. At 16, he played in the British Open.

He was 18 when he won the British Amateur in 1998 to qualify for his first Masters. He already wore the mantle of great expectations.

“He has more game than I had at the same age,” Jose Maria Olazabal said.

“If things go right, he will become a great champion,” Seve Ballesteros said.

The 18-year-old Garcia came over to start prepping his game against professionals on American courses. His first pro event in the U.S., he finished third in the Nike Greensboro Open on the same Sedgefield course where he would eventually win the 2012 Wyndham Championship.

The teenage Garcia exuded confidence that week, but he was already wise enough to know that expectations offered no guarantees.

“This sport is so difficult. We’ll see. We’ll see,” he said in 1998. “To be a good golfer you have to want to be the best and want to win. If you just want to make the cut and see what happens, I do not think you can be your best.”

The intervening 19 years have sometimes tested Garcia’s faith in himself. He’s won nearly 30 times around the world, including a Players Championship among nine PGA Tour wins. Yet he’s endured great heartbreak on the major stages.

When his putt to win slid off the lip at Carnoustie in 2007, he decried his fate “playing against more than the field.”

After a disappointing third round at Augusta in 2012, he vented his frustrations to several Spanish reporters.

“I’m not good enough … I don’t have the thing I need to have,” Garcia said in Spanish. “In 13 years I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to play for second or third place.”

Garcia has grown up and grown to believe in the five years since.

“I probably didn’t accept things as well as I should have,” he said Friday. “And I’ve shown myself many times after that, that I can contend and I truly feel like I can win – not only one, but more than one.”

Garcia should feel that way. His ball striking has always been the envy of peers. He’s second this week in driving accuracy (86 percent) and sixth in greens in regulation (69 percent). He ranks seventh in scrambling, saving par from all four bunkers he’s found including a near hole-out from a plugged lie on the 12th Friday that he called “hands down the best bunker shot I’ve ever hit.” He played 21 holes before making his first bogey in the 2017 Masters.

Most importantly, Garcia has made peace with the vagaries of Augusta National. He’s engaged to be married, providing a happy context in his life that is reflected in his performance and his outlook.

“Once you realize that sometimes funny things are going to happen with good shots, and you can accept that, then you can do better,” he said, admitting that the gray in his beard has tempered the internal storm that was known as El Niño. “I think that I’m a little bit calmer now. I think that I’m working on trying to accept things, like I said earlier, which can happen here and can happen anywhere. It’s part of golf. It’s not easy. It’s much easier to say than to do it. But that’s the challenge we always have, you know, making sure that you accept the bad moments or the bad breaks with the good ones, and kind of move on.”

Acceptance seems to have brought out better breaks, like the one on the 10th hole when he was compelled to hit a provisional tee shot fearing his ball might be lost left. He didn’t realize it bounced out of the trees into the fairway, allowing him to make bogey even though the scoreboards presumed he made triple.

“The most important thing is I knew where I stood,” Garcia said. “I knew I wasn’t 1-under; I knew I was 3.”

Garcia is once again poised to fulfill his presumed destiny in the place where Ballesteros and Olazabal established such a great Spanish precedence. He’s embracing what’s ahead instead of everything that’s come before.

“I’m excited about the challenges that this weekend is going to bring, and hopefully I’ll step up to them and I’ll be able to be up there on Sunday with a solid chance at winning, at winning this beautiful tournament,” he said.

That it could come on what would have been Seve’s 60th birthday Sunday is nothing Garcia can afford to think about with 36 holes to go.

“Hopefully, we’ll be standing here and we’ll be talking about that, that feeling again,” he said. “That would be the best thing that could happen to me, and you know, I’m going to do my best to make sure that I’m here to tell you how it feels.”