He Changed Golf for a Continent

When Severiano Ballesteros first showed up in England with a golf club in his hand and a tee in his mouth, the British didn’t know whether to laugh or call immigration. They didn’t know they were looking at the biggest threat to the Empire’s national sport since the Spanish Armada.

They tried to be kindly. “Look, son, there are no bulls to fight in Britain. Now, why don’t you get yourself a pair of flamenco boots and a girl with a comb in her hair and get on the table and give us a dance?”

There was no one to tell them this young Spaniard with the bearing of a matador and the swashbuckle of Pizarro would rejuvenate and revolutionize golf in the British Isles.

Seve hated England. “So cold, so windy, so cloudy, rainy.” Even the golf courses turned him off. I mean, where were the trees? What kind of a golf course was raked by Arctic blasts of air off the North Sea?

There was nothing in the handsome young man’s appearance that would suggest he would win three British Opens, two Masters, six victories on the American tour and 60 other tournaments worldwide from Japan to Kenya. No one could guess he would be widely recognized for years as the world’s greatest golfer.

How do you get to that heady eminence from a childhood in the Spanish fishing village of Pedrena, where almost nobody had any idea whether you played golf with a stick or a glove and a golf professional was weighed on a social par with a waiter.

Seve’s first golf club was a two-iron fastened onto a tree limb. He took it to bed with him so nobody would try to poke the fire with it. His first golf ball was a round stone.

But he had an uncle, Ramon Sota, who had played in the American Masters and there was a golf course--for the rich folks and the tourists--not far from Pedrena. Seve played on it in the dark. And caddied by day.

The first British Open he entered, he shot 79-80 and was on his way back to Spain by nightfall. But the very next year, at the age of 19, he electrified the golf world by going head-to-head with Johnny Miller and Jack Nicklaus at Royal Birkdale and finishing second to Miller by a shot. He learned fast.

He was fearless on a fairway. Or in the rough, for that matter. Daring, imaginative, almost reckless, Seve Ballesteros, like the young Arnold Palmer, became the darling of the golf galleries in Britain. And elsewhere.

He changed the game in Britain. Till Seve came along, they used to play this stodgy, play-it-safe, hit-it-in-the-middle game. They preferred to roll the ball to the pin. Seve tried to hit the pin in flight. If Seve had been a matador, he would have gone over the horns at the bull.

He played power golf. Someone once noted that some golfers go at the game like a guy laying brick. Seve did it like a guy painting a sunset. He’s creative. He invents shots. He wins British Opens with shots out of parking lots. He stalks the game like a guy hunting a wounded lion, his eyes afire, his dark, brooding good looks somber with effort. When he smiles, it is like sun breaking through clouds. It is a mischievous, little-boy smile, infectious, joyous, the smile of a kid who sees a new bicycle under a Christmas tree.

We always felt his game was fragile. Golf cannot be dragged by the hair indefinitely, not by Palmer and not by Ballesteros. Wild, hell-for-leather, go-for-it golf has to boomerang. It’s a game that punishes recklessness.

So, a lot of us thought when this year’s Ryder Cup rolled round, the European team was in for a drubbing this week at the hands of the American Ryder Cup team at Kiawah Island. The Americans had the better players.

But the Europeans still had Ballesteros.

Before Ballesteros, a Ryder Cup was a formality--a recital, not a contest. The Hogans, Sneads, Nicklauses, Palmers--to say nothing of the Caspers, Mangrums, Nelsons--treated the British team as if it were simply there to provide background, character actors in this drama. It was just something for the Americans to demonstrate their skills on. Like a piano for Paderewski.

It could hardly be called a contest. It was more like the Charge Of The Light Brigade. Over and over. Theirs but to not do and die.

Seve changed all that. First of all, thanks to his charismatic personality and flamboyant game, the lords of British golf (in this case, real lords) were moved to accept a suggestion from Jack Nicklaus and expand their Ryder Cup team to include Europe. Make that to include Seve Ballesteros.

It’s no accident that, after Seve joined British golf, its character changed. No more pursed-lip, controlled game. Britain began to breed big hitters, chance-takers, go-for-the-flag-of-the-green, not the fat-of-the-green. Seve became the most exciting player in the world. And British golf left its Queen Mother approach and began to play let-out-the-shaft golf.

But Seve has begun to come into focus more like Hamlet than Lochinvar of late. The bold putts didn’t drop as often, the wild swings didn’t hit the pins anymore. Seve was 34 but an old 34. He had dipped into the capital of his talent once too often, we told ourselves. And without Seve--whose inspiration was as important as his iron play--no more Ryder Cup in Blighty.

When the matches at Kiawah started Friday, the theory looked safe. Seve’s tee shots ended in lost balls, in water, in high pampas grass or unplayable lies. His putts were wildly long or off line.

But his legacy was still working. Jose Maria Olazabal is Seve’s clone. And Jose carried his mentor, his idol. This pair has been a scourge in America’s side for three Ryder Cups, and they managed to keep the wheels on this time. In the alternate-shot play, Seve time and again left his young protegee with a twisting, two-break, hardly-makeable seven-foot putt after a poor lag. Not to worry. Olazabal made them.

And then, gradually, when you least expected it, the old Seve surfaced. Miraculous shots, toll-call putts--the old Ballesteros magic.

As usual, these Conquistadores infected the whole team. Just when this British fleet seemed about to strike its colors, these Spanish men o’ war would come up alongside and lead and inspire them. When the Europeans lost all three morning matches on Friday, Ballesteros-Olazabal saved them from a shutout. That afternoon, they led them to a 2 1/2-to-1 1/2 advantage.

The next morning, they staved off a shutout again. In the afternoon, exhausted, they held off the American charge of Fred Couples and Payne Stewart to put the Europeans into today’s final matches even and not down one.

The Yanks may finally reclaim the cup in today’s final 12 singles matches. Even in the years they have lost, the Americans have managed to win the last day’s competition, 7-5 last time and 7 1/2-4 1/2 in 1987.

But if they don’t, you might have to say the reign in Spain has changed the game.