He Made Masters a Scramble : Golf: In 1980, Ballesteros hit shots from places few had ever imagined as he became the youngest winner at Augusta National.

Three white golf balls--where there should have been only two--dotted the seventh green of Augusta National as Andy North and David Graham approached the hole during the second round of the 1980 Masters.

Alongside the elevated green stood a scowling Severiano Ballesteros, who saw nothing funny when Graham said, “Are you playing through, or would you like to putt out for an eagle?”

The scowl deepened when North began to laugh as he realized what had happened. Ballesteros had teed off on the 17th hole and hit a towering hook that carried over a stand of majestic Georgia pines and pastel-shaded dogwood and dropped onto the putting surface of the adjacent seventh hole.

“Nice drive, Seve, you’re closer to the hole in one than I am in three, so how about if I play your ball?” the former U.S. Open champion kidded. North’s second shot had landed in a bunker and his blast out fell short of the green.

Ballesteros never smiled. He had been seething since before he teed off after taking three putts on the 16th green.

“I swing too hard, I am very mad,” he explained later.

After more than 10 minutes, while North chipped up and he and Graham putted out, a green-coated Masters committeeman arrived and showed Ballesteros where he could drop his ball on the fringe of the seventh green for his second shot.

Between the ball and the flagstick, in addition to the towering pines, was a 20-foot high scoreboard and a grandstand full of Masters patrons (In Mastersland, there are no fans, or spectators. All the paying customers are patrons). Another long delay ensued while the gallery was moved to make way for Ballesteros’ shot.

Once he knew where his ball lay, Ballesteros walked through the pines and halfway down the incline toward the 17th green, where his playing partner, Larry Nelson, waited patiently, and somewhat curiously. He had seen mini-miracles by the youthful Spaniard earlier that day and he almost expected another one.

He got it.

Ballesteros returned to his ball, took a seven-iron from his bag and after his caddie stepped aside, lined the club up with the corner of the scoreboard. Then he took his stance over the ball, his dark eyes darting first to the scoreboard, then back to the ball and then to the scoreboard again. He waggled his club head a couple of times before drawing the club back and driving the ball high into the blue Augusta sky.

It disappeared from sight behind the trees, but its direction and subsequent landing were identified by a mighty roar that went up from the crowd around the green.

Ballesteros scrambled down the hill, through the pink, red and white azalea bushes that make Augusta National what it is. He saw where his ball had landed only when the crowd parted at the green’s edge and he stepped into the spotlight to the crescendo of another thunderous cheer.

The brooding scowl disappeared as he saw the dimpled Titleist only 15 feet from the pin.

“I line up (the ball) with right side of scoreboard,” Seve said later. “It give me the line. It good place for scoreboard, give good line.”

When he sank the birdie putt moments later, the legend of Ballesteros was taking form. He had celebrated his 23rd birthday only two days earlier.

The three shots that Friday on No. 17 were only a small fraction of the 275 he took to become the youngest winner in Masters history, but Ballesteros’ flamboyance, style and pizazz set him apart from the generally bland shot-makers around him. When Fuzzy Zoeller, the 1979 champion, helped him on with the green jacket emblematic of a Masters victory, the Spaniard had became a world force in golf.

That birdie, plus five others that day, gave him a four-stroke lead after 36 holes, and he extended it to seven in the third round and to 10 after the first five holes of the final round--only to lose eight of those strokes before rallying to fend off Australian Jack Newton and American Gibby Gilbert and win by four.

From the birdie he made on the second hole--a 555-yard par-five--of the first round, Ballesteros was never out of the lead. He shot a 66 that day, but everything took second billing to the plight of Tom Weiskopf on that windy Thursday.

Weiskopf, the 1973 British Open champion, had won 13 tour events and more than $1.7 million in the 15 years since leaving Ohio State with one of the sweetest swings in golf. As he approached the dazzlingly beautiful 12th hole, he was even with par. It was only 155 yards from the tee, across Rae’s Creek, to the green, backdropped by an amphitheater of multicolored azaleas, white and orchid dogwood and yellow jasmine.

Weiskopf’s tee shot, with a seven-iron, landed on the fringe of the green but too much backspin made it back up and roll tantalizingly down the embankment into the creek. The tall, erect Weiskopf--four times a runner-up in the Masters--walked briskly to a drop area about 20 yards from the water and dropped a second ball over his shoulder.

His sand wedge shot looked like a mini-version of the first. It, too, hit the fringe and then backed up into the creek. Another drop. A desultory shot that plopped into the water. Another drop. A worse shot that almost didn’t reach the water. Another drop.

Finally, hitting what was his 11th stroke on the scorecard, Weiskopf’s ball cleared the creek and landed left of the shallow green. A chip and a putt gave him a 13. No one else had ever shot a 10 over par on a single hole in the 44 years of the Masters.

“It was embarrassing,” a surprisingly calm Weiskopf said later in the locker room. “I thought I hit the first one good, but I had too much (backspin) on it. Then I took a drop and the drop area was still wet from yesterday’s rain and the grass was thin. I should have gone back a few yards, but all I could think about was hitting it and getting out of there.”

Weiskopf, who had a reputation for storming off courses, even in mid-round, when things didn’t go well, not only finished his round with an 85, but also came back the next day and shot 79--thanks in part to two more watery shots at No. 12.

He missed the cut by 18 strokes.

The swirling winds of Augusta National took their toll of favorites Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus at the same hole, the one Bobby Jones called the Golden Bell when he built the course for the inaugural 1934 Augusta National Invitational Tournament. It wasn’t until 1938 that the tournament became known as the Masters.

Watson, the tour’s leading money winner the previous three years, bogeyed No. 12 on Thursday and then put two balls into Rae’s Creek for a triple bogey on Saturday, falling from contention.

Nicklaus, winner of five previous Masters, found the water for a double bogey in the first round and was never a factor after taking three putts on six greens in the second round.

Ballesteros teed off late in the afternoon of the first round, when the wind was gusting a bit stronger than earlier, but he shot a six-under-par 33-33--66 and shared the lead with David Graham, a touring Australian, and Jeff Mitchell, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound rookie. Craig Stadler, playing with Ballesteros, had a 74.

Many higher scores--76s by Lanny Wadkins and Sandy Lyle, 77s by Curtis Strange and Billy Casper and, of course, Weiskopf’s 85--were blamed on the capricious, ever-changing, winds.

Ballesteros, hitting the fairway off the tee on all but one hole, was boringly consistent.

“If I hit the ball well, it doesn’t matter if the wind is blowing or not,” Ballesteros said. “I play more in England than anywhere else and that is where I practice and the wind is always blowing.

“Players should not be concerned too much with the wind. If you think too much about it, you lose your swing.”

When the putter is working as well as Seve’s was that day, it also tends to make one feel better about the wind. He sank birdie putts of 15, 12, 15, 10 and 25 feet, plus a pair of two-putt birdies on par-five holes.

Friday was a different day for him off the tee. He was as wild as he had been straight the previous day, but he had a logical reason: “Yesterday was Thursday and today is Friday and you know, that’s a difference.”

The heroics started early. He hooked his tee shot into the dogwood on No. 2, but the ball caromed back into the fairway, from where he ripped a one-iron second shot into a greenside bunker. He blasted out and sank a 10-foot putt for his first of six birdies.

On No. 14, a 420-yard par-four, he hooked his drive so far left that he had to loft a pitching wedge over a stand of pines to the green. Twenty feet. One putt. Another birdie.

Seve summed it his round succinctly: “All hooks, all birdies, I think they good drives. It is very boring if just fairway, fairway, fairway. It doesn’t matter where you hit the drive if you make the putt.”

Rex Caldwell, happy-go-lucky product of San Fernando Valley State College, now Cal State Northridge, shot a second-round 66 and moved into second place, but he was four shots shy of the leader.

On a gloomy, muggy Saturday that turned into a day-long drizzle, Ballesteros kept the patrons interested with four bogeys, an eagle, six birdies--and only seven pars.

He got the eagle on the 530-yard eighth hole when he followed a long drive with a 245-yard three-iron shot that stopped five feet from the pin.

He need a stroke of good luck to salvage a bogey on No. 5, a 450-yard par-four, where he drove his tee shot so far into the woods that he hit a provisional ball in case he couldn’t find the first one.

“I was saying to myself when I was looking for my ball, ‘Seve, you’re going to take double bogey here, but even if you do you’ll still be one shot ahead so keep calm and don’t get mad.’ Then I found my ball, I know I save a stroke.”

The shot went up, as he had planned, and dropped over the pines onto the fairway, from where he chipped up and took two putts for his bogey.

“That’s very good, make bogey and go on. Everyone makes bogeys at the Masters. What difference does it make when you make them? Just go on to next hole.”

On the next hole, 190-yard No. 6, he demonstrated what he meant. He hit a seven-iron shot that landed on the green and rolled across a corner of the hole before stopping less than a foot away for a tap-in birdie.

“I was disappointed when it didn’t go in,” he said, only half joking. “I thought it was going to be a hole in one, and I have never had one.”

The 68 pulled him seven strokes ahead as Caldwell dropped back with a 72 and Ed Fiori, another Southern Californian who learned his golf on public courses around Downey, took over second with a roller-coaster round of 69.

Sunday morning, before Ballesteros teed off, he was all smiles.

An early morning downpour turned Augusta National into a 365-acre hothouse and Ballesteros turned the heat up another notch with birdies at the first, third and fifth holes to go 10 shots up on Newton and Gilbert, who admitted they were playing for second money.

The only excitement was whether Seve might shoot 67 and earn a $50,000 bonus from Golf magazine for breaking the tournament record of 271 set by Nicklaus in 1965 and equaled by Raymond Floyd in 1976.

“The way Seve was playing the front nine, Houdini couldn’t have caught him,” Newton, his playing partner in the final round, said. It was one of the last times Newton appeared in a major tournament. Early in 1983 he lost his right arm and eye after walking into a spinning propeller of a private plane in Sydney, Australia.

But Ballesteros’ magic was turning to ashes. He bogeyed No. 10 with three putts but hardly anyone noticed. At No. 12, the breezes that often change direction in a ball’s mid-flight caught Seve’s six-iron tee shot. The ball looked as if had been struck perfectly when it left his club, but it hit a swift gust and fell short of the green and bounded from the embankment into Rae’s Creek.

A sand wedge from the drop area--the same one where Weiskopf had suffered three days earlier--reached the green for a two-putt double bogey.

Strangely, Seve was still smiling.

“I was not worried. I always make double bogeys. I think I make pretty good swing so I go on to the next hole. Thirteen is my lucky number. I was glad it was thirteen that was next.”

The race was tighter than Ballesteros knew. Newton, the Australian Open champion and one of Seve’s best friends on the European tour, had birdied Nos. 11 and 12 and the 10-stroke margin had been cut to five.

Ballesteros, who had birdied the short par-five 13th all three days, put his tee shot in the middle of the fairway and took out a three-iron for his second shot to the green. He hit it fat. He knew immediately it had no chance to cross the water.

He managed to salvage a bogey, but when Newton countered with a third consecutive birdie, the margin was a precarious three shots.

Good fortune, which had seemingly turned its back on the Spaniard, returned to his side on No. 14, where his drive hit a tree and bounded down a steep incline onto a patch of pine needles. When he got to his ball, he surprisingly found an open shot to the green, from where he hit a six-iron 25 feet from the hole, saving par.

“That shot from the woods was the turning point,” Newton said later. “He could have been in the woods without a shot, and even after he hit it out he was far enough away to three-putt but he hit a great first putt. If he had bogeyed that hole it might have been a disaster for him.”

Ballesteros said that his next two shots, a drive of 310 yards down the right side of the fairway and a four-iron over a pond to the 15th green, were his most important of the day. Both were on the hole where Gene Sarazen made his legendary double-eagle 2 with a four-wood in 1935. To reach the hole, players must walk across the Sarazen bridge to the left of the green. “I’m in the water two times already. If I put the ball in the water again, it’s bad, very bad,” Ballesteros said.

Ballesteros got his two-putt birdie on 15 and parred the final three holes, becoming the youngest Masters champion. He was 23 years 5 days old when he first wore the green jacket. Nicklaus, at 23 years 2 months, had been the youngest when he won in 1963.

Now he is back, looking for a third green coat in the Masters, which will start Thursday.

Golf Notes

Jack Nicklaus, fresh off a senior tour victory, hit a spectator with a golf ball Tuesday during a practice round at Augusta National. Nicklaus, a six-time Masters champion, hooked his second shot on the 555-yard second hole and the ball hit the spectator below the right eye. Nicklaus came over and apologized. The man, who was not identified, left the course to receive medical treatment.

1980: A NEW MASTER AT AUGUSTA

Seve Ballesteros was all over the course, once even hitting the wrong green, but he led by 10 shots early in the final round and became the youngest winner of the green jacket. Here are the top finishers in that tournament of a decade ago.

SEVE BALLESTEROS...66-69-68-72--275

GIBBY GILBERT...70-74-68-67--279

JACK NEWTON...68-74-69-68--279

HUBERT GREEN...68-74-71-67--280

DAVID GRAHAM...66-73-72-70--281

GARY PLAYER...71-71-71-70--283

BEN CRENSHAW...76-70-68-69--283

ED FIORI...71-70-69-73--283

TOM KITE...69-71-74-69--283

LARRY NELSON...69-72-73-69--283

JERRY PATE...72-68-76-67--283