Seve: The legend

SOME people transcend sport. Mention the name Muhammad Ali anywhere in the world and the chances are that, unless you are with a native tribe in the remotest part of the Amazon or Congo basin, people will know exactly who you are talking about.
In the world of golf, Tiger Woods transcends the sport, as Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer did decades before.

Their massive ability, enormous success and sheer force of personality take them into the global public psyche. Severiano
Ballesteros was the first European to join that list. All you need to say is 'Seve' and someone who does not know a wedge
from a five iron, let alone how to hit a ball with one of them, immediately knows you are referring to the Spanish golfing
conquistador, the man who brought European golf to the masses.

Now, however, the 50-year-old maestro has called it a day, saying farewell to the crowds he has thrilled and delighted in equal measure since he first exploded onto the British golfing scene at the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in 1976 as a swashbuckling 19-year-old.

In that event he tied second with Nicklaus behind Johnny Miller and gave the galleries a taste of what was to come - probably the finest and most complete short game in golfing history to augment massively powerful drives as likely to end up in the stands or tented village as they were to bisect a fairway. He was handsome, he was unorthodox, he had genius and devil in equal measure.

Men admired him, women fancied him - and you could not say that about too many golfers at the time, nor since. Ballesteros exuded charisma from evey pore. And he continues to do so even now. After his best days on the course left him in the mid 1990s he attacked the role of European Ryder Cup captain with customary panache and relish. The sight of him dispensing advice from his buggy is the defining image of the 1997 matches, the year Tiger made his debut.

His latest love - linked, of course, to golf - is course design. His first British course, The Shire in north London, is already receiving warm reviews despite only opening this year. Typically, it is a course with a considerable amount of risk and reward about it. Water features extensively and, while it is a challenge for Ballesteros and his supremely talented ilk, it remains playable for the handicap golfer - very much the designer's overall philosophy.

Seve’s Ultimate Ryder Cup Team

SEVE took his time before selecting his side but his first three picks were out before he even touched his food: “I take Jose Maria, Sergio and Sandy. Sandy a great player. I get on better with Sandy than Nick.”

Jose Maria Olazabal
Sergio Garcia
Sandy Lyle
Nick Faldo
Ian Woosnam
Bernhard Langer
Colin Montgomerie
Lee Westwood
Darren Clarke
Padraig Harrington
Sam Torrance
Seve Ballesteros
Captain: Tony Jacklin

SEVE has come to St Andrews, the course where 23 years ago he hit his favourite golf shot of all time, to launch a DVD of his life in golf. Dressed in black rather than the preferred navy blue of yesteryear, he is reliving the moment for the cameras when he rolled in a 12-foot putt for a birdie on the final hole to take the famous Claret Jug from Tom Watson and Bernhard Langer by two strokes.

His right hand punches the air with his putter held in his left, the silhouette of which is emblazoned on his clothing and has become his trade mark in the same way Palmer used to sport a small umbrella on his. The hair may now be greying and the face more lined but those watching from the edge of the green still know they are in the presence of greatness.

The similarities between Palmer and Ballesteros are striking. Neither came from patrician backgrounds and both had to sneak onto their local golf courses in late afternoon when there were no members about because otherwise they would have been thrown off. Both brought golf to the people.

"I was caddy," says Seve, "and caddy no allowed on golf course or in clubhouse, so I play on beach with pebbles or hit balls I find in rough or steal from the amateurs. People who play golf at that club were snobby people, they did not want us."

Win a copy of Seve's DVD here

After the members had gone home or were taking sherry in the clubhouse Seve used to clamber over a two-metre-high wall to gain access to the course. He admits that for him as a youngster the name of the game was to hole out as quickly as possible, just in case he was caught.

Coming from a golfing background, his uncle was Ramon Sota, a well-known Spanish professional. His elder brothers also both played, and the young Seve was given a cut-down three iron to play with. He learned how to do everything with it.He could use it to hit sand shots, tee shots, pitches, chips, high fades and low draws. He played it like musicians would a violin or a cello.

On the windswept coast of his northern Spanish home of Pedrena he made that three iron sing. He may have been rejected by the members at Pedrena Golf Club but he was not going to be rejected anywhere else.

"Because I have only one club I have to use my imagination," he recalls. "In Spain there were no magazines, nothing in newspapers or on television about golf."

Seve had no role models, so he fashioned his game into one he thought would be most effective for him. And what a game it was. After the film shoot he walks back down the course towards the ugly monolith of the Old Course Hotel where he is staying. He is interrupted on his way by a blonde American woman of mature years who has vaulted the wall that runs down the side of the famous old links in order to have her picture taken with him. Ballesteros smiles, and obliges.

Then two other American golfers, who are playing the course, appear begging a shot with the maestro on the Swilcan Bridge. Again he smiles and poses.

"If I have pound for every autograph I be very rich man," he says as the fans are politely moved on. Seve looks round when standing on the bridge as if the exploits of 1984 are fresh in his memory and there is almost a look of sadness in his brown eyes as he knows those halcyon days will never come again. The adoring gallery is silent forever.

Now he is into golf course design, although only in Europe. He does not enjoy air travel because of the delays and his back problems. Typically he wants to make courses that anyone can afford to play on.

"I want my courses to be not just for rich people. I want everyone to be able to play, not like Spain when I start."

He pauses again at the side of the 17th green, the treacherous 461-yard par four 'Road Hole'and peers at the bunker known forever as the Sands of Nakajima, which Japanese golfer Tommy Nakajima landed in for three in 1978 and finally walked off with a nine. That year Seve shot 5-6-6-5 here.

"This great golf hole," he says approvingly. "Everyone talk about par fives or threes making great golf holes. I want to make holes like this. Links golf. You can birdie, par, bogey, take seven, eight, nine."

He walks back down the fairway to the entrance to his hotel and breakfast. The restaurant is busy with golfing pilgrims fuelling themselves for the day ahead. All conversation stops as Seve walks in, and then starts again as the diners all delightedly mutter to one another about who is sitting at the table in the window.

Looking back over his life in golf there is still one dark moment that he would love to have a chance to relive. It came during the 1986 Masters, the year his father had died of lung cancer. Leading the field by two he nailed his drive on the par-five 15th long and straight and then had to wait over five minutes before taking his second shot, a four iron, into the green. Up ahead on the green, Tom Watson and the aforementioned Nakajima were waiting for crowds to move off after a resurgent Nicklaus.

"We had a long wait and adrenalin is pumping," he recalls. "Sometimes you hit the ball harder."

He hit it horribly heavy and into the water it went. With it went Seve's chance of winning the tournament. Even now one senses that Seve is not that happy to talk about it. On more cheery topics his favourite companions for his last game of
golf ever should the fates deny him any more than that would be with his daughter, Carmen, and Muhammad Ali, who sent him a letter of congratulation after his second Masters triumph in a show of one sporting icon recognising another. Seve also enjoys boxing as a sport.

And for the future? Apart from golf course design Seve has motor sport ambitions which is unusual, and also slightly scary, given that his driving of a car can be as wildly erratic as his tee shots became later on in his career.

"Oh no, I read map," he laughs when talking of serious plans to enter the Paris to Dakar car rally.

"He drive," he smiles as he points to his nephew Ivan who is grinning nervously the other side of the table. One gets the feeling that if Seve has his heart set on it then he is certainly going to be doing it. When Seve is at home, his favourite place where he can move around undisturbed by autograph hunters or nosey journalists, the very last thing he sees at night before turning his light out is a photograph above his bed of the closing holes on a famous golf course. But which course?

Seve moves his left arms towards the plate-glass window of the restaurant and looks out up 17 and 18, across the twinkling burn and the Swilcan Bridge, towards the famous old grey stone clubhouse of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St Andrews. ‘It all this,’ he smiles before tucking into his breakfast.