Even the late, great Severiano Ballesteros - he of the outrageous imagination and ceaseless ambition - would not have dared script this scenario.

Sergio Garcia, the golfing heir who had palpably failed to live up to the billing, at last breaking his major duck. At the Masters. On what would have been Seve's 60th birthday.

Of course, being Garcia, it did not feature a straight-forward plot. Indeed, his play-off victory over Justin Rose - trying to become just third English winner in history, but the second in succession - stretched reality way beyond the incredulous. Sergio just had to do it as Seve did it. When seemingly down and out and then with so much guts and panache.

Garcia had appeared to have blown it - yet again – when missing a five-footer on the final hole of regulation. Remember this is the venue where, just a few years ago, the 37-year-old declared he could never win. Yet this time, unlike at Caroustie at the 2007 Open, it was not the Spaniard who cracked in extra time.

After Rose had sliced it into the trees on the 18th and been forced to chip out, Garcia hit a sumptuous approach. And when Rose missed his 12-footer for par, Garcia had two for it from 10 feet. He holed it anyway – well, Seve would have – and signaled to the sky and hugged his fiancé, Angela Akins, whom he is soon to marry. The entire picture is all he has ever dreamed of.

After 73 majors, 22 top 10s, 12 top fives, six top threes and four runners-up placings, someone else will now have to don that tag of “best player never to have won...”.