the child whose game became a revolution

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The child whose game became arevolution

Seve Ballesteros built his own legend based on his strongpassion for golf

JUAN MORENILLA 08/05/2011

A few weeks ago, gazing across the beautiful course at Pedreña, Ramón Sota

recalled for this newspaper the first sporting steps taken by his nephew

Severiano. "He was a child, but you could already spot the genius in him,"

recalled Sota.

"As I had done, he fed himself on golf in secret, playing in the places where a

boy like him was not allowed to - at night with the full moon, along the lanes

and when he ducked out of school. [...] He had the same love for golf as I did.

But there was something different in him, something unique: he had an

imagination for the sport that I had never seen in anybody else. He could see

things that nobody else could."

Sota was himself a pioneer of Spanish golf, the first who could go toe-to-toe with

the great global players, such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. His nephew

Severiano - just as headstrong and stubborn as his uncle, as hard as the stone

that gives the Cantabrian town of Pedreña its name, and as strong as its salted,

seafaring people - went much, much further. He was a revolutionary and

considered one of the greatest Spanish sports star to ever live. Ballesteros died

on Saturday, after a three-year battle with brain cancer. He was 54.

On the shore of Santander's bay on April 9, 1957, Ballesteros was born into a

family that lived off the land, and from looking after the health of the greens at

the local course. His first clubs were improvised affairs, essentially homemade

gadgets sufficient to nourish the hunger for the game that would pang ever

harder in the young boy's gut. Only a prodigious pair of hands and a mind

capable to see beyond what was patently obvious would get so much life from

such rudimentary tools.

The 40 pesetas he would earn as a caddie for one of the aristocratic golfers

playing a round at Pedreña instilled in the young Seve the value of working



hard, the determination that would accompany him throughout his career and

his life. Seve, like his uncle Ramón, learned to make his own way, stubbornly

self-taught to the point of not wishing to take any advice from anyone, not even

his own uncle.

His pride led him to note carefully who had helped him - such as his patron for a

time, cardiologist César Campuzano - and who had not. Later on, his success

would give him the opportunity to settle his accounts and make clear he knew

who his friends had been.

The boy who played in the sand on the beach or, whenever possible, on the

greens of the lords and dukes, turned professional at the age of 16 as the Franco

regime entered its final era. No sooner had he started competing than he startedto win.

The Vizcaya Open, the first Spanish championship. Word quickly spread

throughout the whole country that there was this boy from Pedreña who was an

ace at that sport with a foreign name and with British traditions. But young Seve

broke away from the fuss and made a whole new space for himself by starting

from scratch. He went abroad. And so it was that the name "Seve" began to

make the headlines.

That proud, solitary reaction that Ballesteros felt toward his triumphs in Spain,

and the love that Britain offered to him in such an immediate and spontaneous

way, distinguished him as a golfer and as a person. His ability to improvise,

often seeming to make the impossible shot come true, and the intense passion

he displayed while doing so, opened up hearts in almost every household in a

country where golf is anything but a peculiar pastime.

Placing second at the 1975 British Open was the definitive basis from which a

legend would be born. His three posterior titles at the British Open, played at

the seaside links courses he was so at home on, besides his two US Masters

victories at Augusta, Georgia, the Prince of Asturias sports prize, two Ryder Cup

triumphs as a player and another as captain, and a place at the World Golf Hall

of Fame, in St. Augustine, Florida, all served to forge that legend.



In golfing terms, Seve always felt closer to the British Isles, and it was there that

he was most at home and where he eventually announced his retirement from

the sport.

Ballesteros' importance, however, goes far beyond his long list of triumphs,impressive as it unarguably is. Seve was a rebellious revolutionary. He never felt

inferior to any other person. That pride was what he instilled in the blood of the

other European players to turn and face the Americans and strip away from

them their long-possessed Ryder Cup, which he did as captain during the

magical weekend at Valderrama, Spain, in 1997, the first time the competition

had been held outside Britain and the United States.

He was the biggest reason that the Ryder Cup became the major world sportingevent it now is. And it was Seve who fought to negotiate better prizes and

appearance money for his fellow pros, also contributing to making the sport

what it is today.

He changed golf forever and became the idol, not just of his own generation, but

also of later crops of players. Seve was the master of them all - a captain, an icon

and a genius.

It was no casual coincidence that Phil Mickelson served paella in his honor at

the latest US Masters. That child who at the age of nine managed to fashion for

himself a club, a ball and a hole to play with through those Pedreña afternoons,

the boy who wanted nobody's advice and whose toughness of character was only

matched by his passion for golf, became one of the legends of world sport.

the child whose game became a revolution

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