Seven days ago, Spanish golfer Seve Ballesteros passed away following a long and difficult battle with brain cancer. The winner of three British Open titles and two Masters championships as well as 45 wins on the European Tour, four wins on the American PGA Tour, six victories on the Japanese Tour and another 31 titles throughout the world, Ballesteros cannot just be remembered for his tournament successes. His most important aspect in the world of professional golf is that he is universally acknowledged to have been the “Arnold Palmer of European golf.”
Born on April 9, 1957 in Pedrena, Spain, Seve was the youngest of five boys. One of his brothers died at a very young age while his three other siblings became professional golfers. His brother Manuel was a top-100 journeyman on the European Tour during the 1970s and his uncle, Ramon Sota, won four times in Europe and made a big splash when he finished in sixth place at the 1965 Masters won by Jack Nicklaus.
Ballesteros” story is similar to the other pioneers of the European Tour such as Nick Faldo and Bernhard Langer. He took up the game at a young age, caddied, dropped out of school and turned professional as a 16-year-old prior to the start of the 1974 golf season. There wasn”t an organized European Tour in those days, but he did make headway right off the bat by winning the Spanish National Championship in 1974 and 1975. He won four international tournaments in 1976 as well as the Dutch Open during that inaugural European Tour season.
Yet it was a close call at the British Open in 1976 that brought Seve onto golf”s center stage. A 19-year-old totally unknown outside Europe, Ballesteros held a two-stroke lead after three rounds over eventual champion Johnny Miller in the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. A final-round 74 dropped him to sixth place, but his great smile, colorful style of play and brilliant and improvisational short game was a good indication that he was the future of European golf.
Ballesteros started to dominate tournament golf in the late 1970s. A good example of that was the year 1978 when the 21-year-old won four times in Europe, won the Greater Greensboro Open in the states, and even won the Kenya Open on the Safari Tour. He won his first of six Order of Merit titles as the top linkster on the European Tour.
Ballesteros cemented his status in 1979 when he won the British Open at Royal Lytham. He added to the oral history of the event by hitting his tee shot on the 16th hole on Sunday so far off line that it ended up in a parking lot among all the cars. However, that area wasn”t out of bounds and Ballesteros played from the car park, hit his iron shot to 15 feet, made the birdie putt, and went on to win the Open by three shots over Ben Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus.
For the next decade or so, Ballesteros was the equal of America”s top golfer, Tom Watson. He won the 1980 Masters, becoming the first European to win that major title. Three years later, he ran down Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite to win the ”83 Masters. In 1984 he battled Bernhard Langer and Tom Watson at the British Open at St. Andrews, the birthplace of golf. Seve birdied the final hole as his ball dropped into the cup on the final roll. He pumped his fist in the air like an exultant toreador and took home his second Claret Jug. He added a third British Open title in 1988, winning once again at Royal Lytham while nudging Nick Price with one of the finest displays of short game brilliance ever seen.
Ballesteros also brought the Ryder Cup into prominence when the entire continent of Europe became eligible for cup play in 1979. As good as he was in stroke play events, Ballesteros was the master of match play dynamics. Over the course of his Ryder Cup career, he garnered 22 ? points in 37 matches and was 11-2-2 when paired in doubles with fellow countryman Jose Maria Olazabal. He also captained the winning European Ryder Cup team in 1997 when the matches were contested at Valderrama in Spain.
Ballesteros was the No. 1-ranked player in the world during the mid-1980s and he was in the world top 10 from 1977 through 1991. His career began its downhill slide in 1992 when he began to suffer chronic back pain. A truly natural golfer who was self-taught, Seve began to work with eccentric American golf professional Mac O”Grady on his swing mechanics. For three years Seve truly struggled with his swing. He used to hit the ball long and off line and now he was hitting the ball short and off line. He was in a period of time where he completely lost his game.
Yet in late 1994 and early 1995, Ballesteros got momentarily back on track with European Tour wins at the Benson & Hedges in England, the German Masters, and finally in his home event, the Spanish Open. It was his last-gasp effort atop the game”s leaderboards. From that point on he struggled and at best he was a marginal golfer.
In 1999 Ballesteros was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 2000 he initiated the Seve Trophy, an annual European Tour team competition between Great Britain and Ireland against continental Europe. He designed golf courses during this time and he also played in one PGA Senior Tour event in 2007. He suffered through that weekend with massive back problems and shortly thereafter he announced his retirement from professional golf.
In October of 2008, Seve was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He went through a 12-hour surgery to remove the tumor and he had three more follow-up operations on his brain. He went through chemotherapy in 2009 and his health continued to deteriorate over the next two years.
The Arnold Palmer of European golf passed away last Saturday. Golf was fun to watch every time Seve Ballesteros teed it up, and the game is far better off because all of us got to watch the mercurial swashbuckler as he hit it sideways, escaped from the most difficult of conditions, and expressed pure joy while playing the game. Thanks for the memories.
