Thought for Seve
Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind (F Scott Fitzgerald)
He was magnificent
All other golfing news this week pales into insignificance when set alongside the awful truth that Seve Ballesteros has died. The strength, volume and eloquence of tributes paid to him, by friends, fellow golfers, writers and many others bears testament to the affection and admiration with which he was regarded and I, for one, am convinced we will never see his like again.
There are golfers we admire and respect – Nick Faldo, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods to name just three – and then there are those we love, such as Arnold Palmer, Sandy Lyle and, top of the list, Seve. In a world of seemingly computer-generated clones, who look, swing a golf club, and dress the same, and who give carefully controlled media soundbites that are a model of bland non-information, Seve stood out like a red tulip in a field of daffodils. The modern Tour pro’s modus operandi is to cut down the mistakes, reduce the margins of error, find the short grass, avoid the hazards and wait for others to falter. Seve, in contrast, never saw a challenge he wouldn’t take on, a course he couldn’t beat into submission, another golfer he couldn’t take to the cleaners or a birdie he couldn’t make. Descriptions like ‘swashbuckling’, ‘cavalier’ and ‘go-for-broke’ attached themselves to him with such predictable regularity because they were true, and we who could only watch and marvel fell in love with the way he played the game but more than that, the unquenchable fire that constantly urged him on to even greater feats of outrageous shot-making.
He wasn’t a saint, and the same absolute certainty that he could hit any shot he chose was often demonstrated off the golf course by his absolute conviction that he was always right and, by association, the rest of the world wrong. He argued, at some point, with just about everyone in golf, including his own European Tour, numerous caddies – of whom he was notoriously demanding – the Ryder Cup selection committee and the US PGA Tour. And it was the American Tour, and by extension American golfers, who he thought combined to exclude him from their more prestigious events, for whom he reserved his greatest animosity. But the consequence of that long-simmering sense of injustice and grievance is that, despite five major championships and 87 victories around the world, the arena in which he strutted his stuff to greater effect than any other was the Ryder Cup, and it is no exaggeration to say that he single-handedly dragged Europe into the position it enjoys today as favourite to win or retain the trophy, wherever it is held.
Many observers see the 1985 contest at The Belfry as the turning point, when Sam Torrance holed the winning putt to end almost 30 years of heartache, in which we’d managed to scrape only one halved match out of 13 contests. But I beg to differ. Two years before at PGA National in Florida, we came tantalisingly close, losing by the narrowest of margins, 13.5 to 14.5. The European players were sitting in the team room morose and dejected when Seve marched in and asked: ‘Why are you miserable? This is a great victory, to lose in America by just one point – we must celebrate.’ And celebrate they did.
And it was in that same 1983 contest that Seve hit what I still believe is the greatest shot played by any golfer. Ever. In his singles match with Fuzzy Zoeller they reached the par five 18th tee all-square and this, of course, is when Seve chose to hit his worst drive of the week, which saw his ball dive into near impenetrable rough that was so bad that even with a wedge in his hand the maestro could only move it 20 yards, into a fairway bunker, where it came to rest under the front lip. Ed Sneed, an on-course commentator for ABC reported that Seve’s only option was to advance the ball as far as he could with a mid-iron. Senor Ballesteros disagreed and marched into the sand with a 3-wood, with which he hit a high, soaring fade 245 yards to the fringe of the green. He halved the hole.
That was the best but there were so many, many more. When Seve attacked a golf course you couldn’t help but admire, and when he walked into a room you couldn’t help but smile. I heard the news of his death in the car and had to pull over to the side of the road because I wasn’t safe to drive on. My life is a little more diminished without Seve in it.
When Walter Hagen, another remarkable showman, passed away a group of friends invited Charles Price, an American writer, to a sports club at which they would drink to The Hague’s memory. He refused, and I can’t improve on the words he used to explain why.
He wrote: ‘I didn’t go. Like Hamlet, golf’s sweet prince, I thought, deserved a grander exit than that. He was splendid. They should have carried him out on a shield.’
Quotes of the Week (things said about Seve)
He goes after a golf course like a lion after a zebra. He doesn’t reason with it; he tries to throw it out of the window or hold its head under the water until it stops wriggling.
Jim Murray 1976
Seve’s never in trouble. We see him in the trees quite a lot, but that looks normal to him.
Ben Crenshaw 1983
Trying to catch Seve is like a Chevy pick-up trying to catch a Ferrari
Tom Kite 1983
I can’t understand how someone can drive that badly and still win an Open championship
Hale Irwin 1979
And finally…
When I play good I have so much fun and so much pleasure that there’s no money in the world that can buy that. I want to keep that for as long as I can
Seve Ballesteros
