There was absolutely nobody like him. It's not often you say that about an athlete and truly mean it.
By Stuart Franklin, Getty Images
Seve Ballesteros, who died of a brain tumor Saturday, was a shot-making wizard and a one-of-a-kind sports hero.
By Stuart Franklin, Getty Images
Seve Ballesteros, who died of a brain tumor Saturday, was a shot-making wizard and a one-of-a-kind sports hero.
Many things came early in the life of Seve Ballesteros, who learned golf on a beach as a kid, using mostly the 3-iron his brother had given him. Such modest beginnings would make him a genius one day, in golf's brightest lights.
He was a professional at 16. A British Open runner-up with Jack Nicklaus at 19, an Open champion at 22, a Masters runaway winner at 23.
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But by 40, his game was gone, a bad back robbing him of his shot-making brilliance. He died Saturday at 54 from a brain tumor, in the bayside Spanish town where he was born.
Ironic, for Ballesteros was the ultimate and most entertaining golf survivor of his age. He engineered shots out of parking lots and forests. He came up with saves off his personal drawing board that most would have never even thought of. Remember the old Larry Bird-Michael Jordan commercial, where they played a game of horse with shots off the scoreboard, through windows and over rafters?
That was sometimes a Seve round.
A friend once told me of walking through part of the Augusta National outback during the Masters, strolling among the pines, supposedly far from the nearest active participant. Suddenly, an annoyed voice hailed him, and he looked up to see Ballesteros, hands on hips.
"I'm trying to play a golf shot here," Ballesteros said.
No word on his final score on that hole. I'm betting par.
When Rory McIlroy's wayward tee shot on No. 10 ended up near a cabin at the Masters last month, a harbinger for his Sunday meltdown, it was natural to think of Ballesteros. In his salad days, he probably would have found a way.
But cancer was the one awful lie that Ballesteros' famous imagination could not beat.
"Lost an inspiration, genius, roll (sic) model, hero and friend," Lee Westwood's Twitter message read Saturday.
The Seve story comes in different shades. The career was electric. Five majors. He transformed the European tour, and golfwise, was America's worst nightmare.
Ballesteros' fire and will more than anything else turned the Ryder Cup from a USA walk in the park to a fierce competition that Team Europe now dominates. He whipped the Yanks both as a player and a captain.
But all that was done way too soon. He was so dashing, so vibrant, so dynamic. But in the end, it is impossible to look at Ballesteros without sadness.
His last major victory came at 31, as the back problems began to relentlessly turn him into a shadow of the early years. At 50, he looked forward to competing with the seniors. "Something that really makes me feel like this is a second chance in my career," he said at the time, in 2007.
But he played in only one tournament, finished last, and went home, knowing it was over. "It's just I don't have the desire," he said two months later at the British Open, as he announced his full retirement. "Sometimes, the game makes you feel miserable."
He said at the time he was looking forward to working in his business, and watching his kids grow up, Maybe be a caddie for them one day.
"This is not a real goodbye, this is I'll see you later," he said. " I have a number of good years ahead of me and I'd rather spend the time with my three children."
Fifteen months later, he fainted while traveling, and a brain tumor was found. He will be buried not far from where he first took hold of that 3-iron. Life can be a circle, and sometimes far too small.
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