~~Now that Rory McIlroy managed to keep his emotions in check to win his third major, The British Open finishing two shots clear of his closest rival, and my good friend Richard Backwell is looking like making the cut in the Senior British Open, let me talk a little about the great “Seve” Ballesteros, The Spanish Matador in golf who won 3 times the British Open in 1979, 1984 and 1988 and inspired me to start playing golf.
”Seve” was one of the most talented and exciting golfers to ever play the game. His creativity and inventiveness on the golf course may never be surpassed. He was Spain's ultimate matador and golf's greatest escape artist, he was better than sensational escapes of Houdini. He was the original get-out-of-jail artist.
In the late 70’s as a teenager, when I started to play golf, I was looking at a top artist, the king of European golf, if you like, for many years. He brought excitement into the European game as Arnold Palmer did into the American game and of course what Greg Norman did into the Australian game. Everybody drew another breath when he played. It was like watching a masterpiece.
I have been so blessed to live in his era. He was the inspiration and my motivation to play golf. He was such an impression for me, the way he played, and the way he was, such a beautiful, natural talent, his hands on the golf club, his address position. He had an unbelievable way of telegraphing through his composure what he was going to do with the ball. It was just like an artist. He never backed down from a challenge. The world of golf has lost in 2011 one of its greatest heroes. America had Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. “Seve” was for Europe Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus rolled into one.
Peter Alliss used to say that “Seve” hits miracle shots.I personally never thought that. Miracles don’t happen very often; he was hitting those shots all the time.
For those that hold the game dear, the Spaniard occupies a special place. Trying to quantify charisma is a challenging task, but it is no abuse of writing on my blog and to say that in this respect he occupies a similar stratosphere to Walter Hagen and Arnold Palmer, two of the most talismanic figures ever to lace up a pair of golf shoes.
Call it charisma, or ” je ne sais quoi”, or what you will, but Ballesteros had an over supply of something that set him apart. When he walked on the course, he created a buzz. He infused the atmosphere with electricity, and created the anticipation that golfing magic was a possibility.
Despite his golf game going bad for many years, an inherent, pied piper-like magnetism remained.
Seve announced his arrival to the golfing world at The Open Championship in 1976 as a 19-year-old. Displaying an outrageous sense of imagination and bravado, he saved par in ways that left observers speechless.The famous episode at the Open Championship in 1979, where he made birdie from the middle of a Royal Lytham car park after a wildly errant tee shot, remains one of the most oft repeated anecdotes of golfing folklore.
At his peak, he played with an unconscious air of arrogance, with almost total disdain for the golf course.The commentator Jim Murray once had this to say of Ballesteros:
“He goes after a golf course like a lion at a zebra. He doesn’t reason with it. He tries to hold its head underwater until it stops wriggling.”
There was no shot too difficult for him to visualise, no copse of trees too thick to manufacture a shot out of. Consequently, he played with little fear, attacking golf courses with abandon, fortified by the knowledge that his mercurial short game was gilt edged insurance against any indiscretion. It was stunning, entrepreneurial golf of the rawest form.
For me, the memories of Ballesteros are powerful, and inspirational. When you watched him on television you were on edge. Golf seemed to take on a new dimension under his influence.
I saw Seve once playing, in a round during the 1996 Alfred DunhillCup in Hong Kong. It was an introduction made by my long time friend Zak Thucker on behalf of tournament sponsor for Asian Zone. I became so entranced by a conversation with the great man on the sixth hole I remembered that I did forget my girlfriend, leaving her 4 holes behind on the tee.
Embarrassing moments aside, what I remember most was a bunker shot played on the par five, ninth hole. Seve had short sided himself, on the downslope of the green side trap, pitching to a tight pin with the green sloping away from him, out of grainy, stony sand where the ball sat down.
I was a reasonable bunker player in these years and I’m not sure that I could have kept it on the green. Needless to say, I was more than interested to watch what he could conjure up out of his mythical bag of tricks.He made a pass at it like Tiger teeing off with a driver on a par five. The ball came out in slow motion, seemingly on time delay, spinning like a whirling dervish. It landed a foot over the bunker lip, took one bounce and stopped on a dime six inches from the hole.
I looked at Seve after the shot, and appreciative, raised eyebrows met simultaneously. Words were unnecessary. From such moments legends are born. In this instance Seve’s was merely further entrenched, laser-etched into the cortex for perpetuity.
When Seve turned up to play, it seemed that little other than golf was on his mind. His intensity was legendary, and often intimidated opponents. Later after the game was over at the club house he described his approach to the start of round in the following way;
“I look into their eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, ‘I am going to bury you’.”
It was little wonder then that small talk wasn’t his forte. Famously aloof, with a Hogan-esque intensity on the golf course, he mostly gave short shrift to niceties. I asked him whether Lee Trevino and he conversed in Spanish, he replied, “No- he’s Mexican.”
Capturing the essence of a personality like Seve stretches the boundaries of objectivity. Like most geniuses, he was, a complex amalgam of factors and influences,he was walking on the edge. Emotional, passionate, often thoughtful, sometimes dark and brooding. Free of spirit, competitive, enigmatic and they’re just the things we freely assume about him from observing his publicly presented identity.But try to capture it we should, because as one of the true greats, he deserves to be remembered at his dynamic best.
For me, nothing quite sums up my perception of the great Spaniard better than an answer given to a journalist in the club house after his play.His round had included a catastrophic four putt, and the writer asked him to describe how it had evolved.
After a moment’s contemplation, he replied laconiclly,
“I miss, I miss, I miss, I make”.
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