Charismatic Spaniard widely seen as the best European golfer of all time
Before the 1976 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, few people outside his home village on Spain's northern coast had heard of Seve Ballesteros, who has died of cancer aged 54. By the end of the tournament, however, the whole world knew of the dashing teenager with the big smile and the adventurous style of play.
Though he led for the first three days of golf's biggest event, Ballesteros faded on the final day, eventually tying for second place with Jack Nicklaus, six shots behind Johnny Miller. For all that, he was the talk of the tournament, especially for the show-stopping way in which he exited centre-stage.
Short and left of the 18th green in two shots and with a pair of bunkers blocking his way to the flagstick, Ballesteros produced the shot of the championship, a chip-and-run that tiptoed delicately between the sand traps and finished no more than two feet from the cup. So exquisite was his touch that, watching on television at home in Texas, the former Open, US Open and US PGA champion Lee Trevino was moved to leap from his armchair in spontaneous celebration of the youngster's audacity and disregard for potential disaster.
Such brilliance was only the start. Over the next two decades, Ballesteros won 87 tournaments around the world, including five major championships – three Opens and two Masters – and a record 50 victories on the European Tour alone. In the process, the gifted Spaniard became the leader of a pack that changed the face of world golf.
Along with Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Bernhard Langer, Ballesteros made up Europe's "big five", who between them won 16 grand slam titles and, along the way, resurrected the all-but moribund Ryder Cup matches between the US and Europe. Previously no more than an exhibition match routinely won by the Americans, the biennial contest is now the most exciting event in golf.
Born in Pedreña, a nondescript fishing village on the southern shore of the Bay of Santander, Ballesteros was the youngest of four brothers, all of whom became professional golfers – the children of Baldomero Ballesteros Presmanes and Carmen Sota Ocejo (whose brother, Ramon, was a good enough player to finish sixth in the 1965 Masters). All six members of the Ballesteros clan lived in a one-storey dwelling above a barn. Their cows occupied the ground floor.
From an early age, the baby of the family showed an unusual aptitude for golf. At the age of seven, he was already hitting stones and pebbles across the nearby fields and the beach, his only club comprising an old 3-iron head into which he would ram sticks to form a shaft. Forced to play every shot of whatever length and height with a club designed to hit the ball far and low, the boy developed the touch and feel for invention that would later captivate the world.
Graduating to the local club, the Real Golf de Pedreña, as a caddie, Ballesteros would sneak on to the course after dark and play by the light of the moon. By the time he was 13, he was easily winning the annual caddie championship.
Eight days after his 17th birthday, Ballesteros turned professional, his first tournament being the Spanish Professional Championship, in which he finished a lowly 20th. Afterwards, he cried in the locker room. In an early taste of the legendary Ballesteros competitiveness, he expected to finish no less than first.
Winning, however, would come later. But it is not so much for his impressive list of victories that Ballesteros was revered. Indeed, with a more prosaic approach to his art – playing for the middle of the green rather than going for the flag – there can be little doubt that he would have won more than the five majors he did. He would also more than likely have surpassed the six-major haul of Faldo, his only real rival for the title of best European golfer of all time.
For Ballesteros, the importance of the journey always far outweighed that of the arrival. So it is that, while Faldo outnumbers him in terms of majors won, it is Ballesteros whom history will judge the more significant. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his magnetism and charisma, the European Tour – where prize-money in excess of £112m was on offer last year – would be but a shadow of its current self. He was the catalyst around which the whole circuit was built.
In the Ryder Cup too, Ballesteros, for all the contributions of others, was the foundation of the European side, for which he competed eight times as a player and once, memorably, as non-playing captain at Valderrama in 1997. Alongside his compatriot, José María Olazábal, Ballesteros played 15 matches against the Americans, winning 11, halving two and losing only twice. At that level of the game, theirs is a remarkable record.
"I had great experiences with Seve in the Ryder Cup," Olazábal told Golf Digest magazine. "He was amazing to see. He believed anything was possible. He constantly shocked me. I wish there was a tape of all the shots he has hit. Then we would really know how special he was.
"No one has ever made a bigger contribution to the European Tour. He was the one who broke down all the barriers, all the walls. He made the rest of the players of his time believe they could play everywhere in the world. I don't think anyone comes close to him in this part of the world."
Although he would hit what Nicklaus would later call "the greatest shot I have ever seen" – a 230-yard 3-wood from a bunker during the 1983 Ryder Cup – perhaps the defining moment of Ballesteros's career came in 1984 at St Andrews. Battling his great rival, Tom Watson, over the closing holes, Ballesteros was 10 feet or so from the flag on the 18th hole after two shots. Should he make his putt, a second Open Championship victory was all but his.
Later, he said he "willed" the ball into the hole, a result followed by the most joyous of celebrations. Again and again, Ballesteros punched the air, his expressive face alive with adrenaline-fuelled emotion, as every spectator in the surrounding grandstands rose as one to acclaim his effort.
On the other side of the ledger, however, there were shots of sheer ineptitude that only endeared the man even more to his audience. No one – not least Ballesteros himself – ever erased from the memory bank the 4-iron he scuffed into the pond fronting the 15th green at Augusta National during the final round of the 1986 Masters. Had he hit the green, the tournament would have been all but over, regardless of the heroics of the eventual champion, Nicklaus.
Sadly, such disasters became more and more common. By the mid-1990s, Ballesteros, always bothered by a bad back, was but a shadow of the golfer he had once been. His last victory of any consequence came in 1995 – appropriately, at the Spanish Open. Perhaps the most damning statistic – one that points to the rapid decline of his game over the latter stages of his career – is that between 1976 and 1992, he was never out of the top 20 on the European Tour Order of Merit. Between 1996 and 2001, he was never inside the top 100.
As well as physical problems, Ballesteros had his share of disagreements with golf's establishment. In 1981 he was left out of the European Ryder Cup side after falling out with the European Tour over the payment of appearance money – cash inducements to which Ballesteros felt he was entitled just for turning up at an event. Then, in the mid-1980s, he was relieved of his playing privileges on America's PGA Tour when he failed to play in the minimum 15 tournaments.
In 2000, along with Faldo, Langer and Olazábal, Ballesteros asked for a close and independent examination of the European Tour's accounts for the previous five years. Controversial at best, insulting at worst, it was a request that did nothing for his popularity with tour officials.
Even worse, in March 2003 he was involved in an ugly altercation with an official after his group had been warned about their slow play during the Madeira Island Open. That was bad enough, but only six weeks later he was penalised a shot for playing too slowly during the third round of the Italian Open. He refused to accept the penalty and was disqualified. Later, he was fined £5,000 and severely reprimanded by the tour's players committee.
Such incidents, however, were mere distractions from the sad deterioration in Ballesteros's on-course performances, a period that eventually led to his retirement from competitive golf in July 2007. Speaking at Carnoustie – at the event at which he had made his debut 31 years earlier – Ballesteros cut a rather forlorn figure, one far removed from the dashing superstar he had once been.
Since then there had been stories of depression and rumours – all vehemently denied – of an attempted suicide in the wake of the death of his girlfriend in a car crash. In October 2008, he collapsed at Madrid airport, was diagnosed with a brain tumour and underwent surgery and chemotherapy. In 2009 he appeared via videolink at the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year event to accept a lifetime achievement award, and had hoped to take part in the Open at St Andrews last year.
Ballesteros is survived by his three older brothers and three children, Baldomero, Javier and Carmen, from his marriage to Carmen Botín, which ended in divorce.
• Severiano Ballesteros, golfer, born 9 April 1957; died 7 May 2011