On reflection it was wrong to say we had been waiting for this since 1999. It was not a thing in 1999 at all. When the precocious 19-year-old charmer Sergio García announced himself by manufacturing a six iron to the green from behind a tree at that year’s US PGA Championship, sprinting up the fairway after it, then running Tiger Woods close in a near-miracle at Medinah, it was simply assumed he would go on insouciantly to gather up armfuls of major titles – just like Tiger. But it did not work out like that.

Since then Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis, Shaun Micheel, Rich Beem, Geoff Ogilvy, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink, Webb Simpson, Trevor Immelman and Mike Weir have won majors – fine players but none possessing the innate flair of Sergio. Ah well, the nature of golf. But no wonder García at one point mentally gave up the ghost, publicly declaring he did not possess the moxie to get the job done.

The warning signs started to flash at the 2007 Open. Sergio played the third round at Carnoustie, during which he established a three-shot lead over Steve Stricker and a six-shot advantage over Padraig Harrington, in garish yellow and red. The Ronald McDonald aesthetic was a harbinger of events to come. Our Pulitzer-winning fourth-round hole-by-hole report started with a checklist for Sergio: “1. DO NOT WEAR AN ALL-YELLOW OUTFIT. 2. DO NOT COCK IT UP LIKE A CLOWN. PLEASE.” He complied with part one at least, sporting a tasteful lime-green top with white trousers. Our live blog finished with a resigned sigh: “Oh, Sergio!”

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To be scrupulously fair, Sergio had not cocked it up like a clown at all; it is just very hard to win a major championship. Our blog also details the eventual winner, Harrington, nearly throwing it away himself, dumping his ball into the burn at the 18th while nervously “chomping on his tongue like he’d just ingested a huge bag of speed”.

But “Oh, Sergio!” would become a recurring cry through the years, a refrain seemingly designed to be sung forever and never fade away, like the coda to Hey Jude.

Sergio was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard at the 2007 US PGA. A year later at the same event he found water at the 16th while leading; his nemesis, Harrington, prevailed again. At the 2014 Open he chased down the leader Rory McIlroy, taking advantage of a huge break which saw him slice an iron deep into a grandstand only for the ball to clatter back on to the apron of the green, from where he scrambled par. But he gave up on a splash from a bunker at the 15th and another race was run. “He’s visibly deflated, staring at the floor,” noted the report. “Can you see a thousand yards past the floor?”

Arguably the most Sergio-esque – Sergical? – moment did not even occur in one of the big four tournaments. At the 2013 Players Championship at Sawgrass, the unofficial fifth major, he was neck and neck with Tiger on reaching the iconic island-green 17th. Two balls in the drink led to a quadruple bogey. He doubled the last, just to make sure.

The Masters that year was special, too. He shot an opening-round 66, the big tease, and in a brazen effort to tempt fate in his favour, the fool who helms these hole-by-hole reports introduced Sergio’s Official Masters Meltdown-o-Meter, designed to gauge his current state of mind. A was happy Sergio; B looked slightly pensive; C pictured our hero kicking off his shoes, flinging clubs and (artistic licence here) kicking a cat in a fit of impotent pique.

By the time he pulled his approach at the 11th into the drink after “wiggling around over the ball for so long he made Kevin Na look like Julius Boros”, the hole-by-hole report had slipped into a minimalist funk of its own: “I have nothing else to say other than C.”

It got to the point where all hope was pretty much gone. Even before Sunday’s final round, after three days of steely Sergio resolve, few HBH readers were prepared to give in to positivity. Sergio fan Simon Farnaby – who knows a thing or two about golfing losers having co-authored this tome – emailed: “I hope it does get to Amen Corner. But it won’t even get there, I’m afraid. He’ll double bogey 4, then fizzle away and we won’t see him again until he holes out on 18.” This is a man who, over the last two decades, has regularly invested sums equivalent to the annual GDP of Yorkshire in backing the man. Superstitious regular contributor Hubert O’Hearn, in the wake of Sergio’s good showing on Thursday, was reduced to wearing the same clothes all week; his dog began staring at him in a pitying manner.

Sergio being Sergio, he did all the things we feared he would do: ship the lead round Amen Corner, whistle drives into bushes, yip crucial short putts in a tentative panic. Readers quickly resorted to tried-and-trusted coping mechanisms. “I was hoping Sergio could make this year’s heartbreak more stylish and sophisticated,” sighed James Ferguson. “He is doing a good job of it so far. Just the right amount of false hope. This one is really going to hurt, isn’t it?”

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Simon McMahon was at the bargaining stage of grief: “If the unthinkable actually happened, what would we have done in June, July and August? Every cloud, eh?” Elliot Carr-Barnsley, meanwhile, turned up late to the party and wondered: “On a scale of one to 10, how likely am I to find the phrase ‘Oh, Sergio!’ written here if I CTRL+F it?”

But Sunday evening was different. Sergio regrouped, scrambled pars, holed putts, held his nerve. With a glorious narrative purity harking back to Medinah he salvaged not one but two situations from behind trees. He made that eagle. And this time, he got there. Sergio García: major champion.

I was too busy shedding happy tears to post Ian Truman’s email, which is an awful shame as it caught the mood of the HBH inbox. “This is for us. All of us. 73 preambles worth of mentioning Sergio but never quite believing it. For getting our hopes up on Saturday afternoons. For kicking our cats as a hundred short putts missed low. All for this. Oh, Sergio, you hero.”

Of course, Sergio being Sergio, there is a bittersweet aftertaste. Could he not have beaten Jordan Spieth? Or Phil Mickelson, or Bubba, or someone else who has a Green Jacket? Because now I have started to worry about Justin Rose – the sporting, gentlemanly Justin Rose – never fulfilling his undoubted Masters promise. Fingers crossed he will do it next year. He will do it some year, won’t he? Oh, Justin!