By the late Seventies the Ryder Cup had become a joke. The Americans so dominated the event that it was no longer of interest as a sporting contest. When Jack Nicklaus suggested that it be broadened to European team instead of a Great Britain and Ireland side, there was one golfer everyone eagerly awaited to see take on the Americans.
"Every generation or so there emerges a golfer who is a little bit better than anybody else. I believe [He] is one of them. On a golf course he's got everything - I mean everything: touch, power, know-how, courage and charisma," Lee Trevino said of Severiano Ballesteros.
Seve didn't so much play the golf course as swashbuckle his way through it. There was the conventional way and there was the Seve way. Always prepared to risk a bogie or worst for the chance of a birdie, he played golf with a passion few can ever match. Seve took all the advice, all the accumulated knowledge of how to play the game and tore it up in way that left golf breathless.
To understand Ballesteros you must understand where he came from, the coastal village of Pedreña in northern Spain. The son of a famous oarsman and the youngest brother to three professional golfers. One of whom was the first to put a golf club in my hands and teach me how to swing. Yet it was the youngest, Severiano, who would one day eclipse them all.
He learnt the game clipping stones along the beach with an old 3 iron given to him by his older brother Manuel. This is where the inventiveness of shot that would come to characterise his game was born. Seve used to sneak onto the course of the Royal Pedreña Club, where he was a caddy and play a few holes under the light of the moon. He was nearly always caught and punished but his rebellious nature always found him back out there in the moonlight. Golf is an addiction. Its rewards come with far less frequency than with many other sports but the high from that perfect connection of ball and clubface can fuel a man on an endless quest for perfection. For Ballesteros it truly was a love affair. As golf fans had with him.
His tour debut, however, was an inauspicious affair. On 22 March 1974 and not quite 17 he finished 20th. Seve was devastated, but his form on a misty, rain-soaked golf course in Venice a few weeks later ensured he would be around for a while. Almost winning the Italian Open was enough to show Ballesteros he had a future in the game.
He made the 1979 European Ryder Cup team, but in a move that hurt him greatly, Ballesteros was snubbed in 1981. Though not for long, Europe needed Ballesteros and new Captain Tony Jacklin knew it too. The Europeans finally began to hit back at the US. First winning at home in '85 and then came 1987 at Muirfield Village. On American soil Ballesteros and his Spanish compatriot Jose Maria Olazabal raced the Europeans into an early lead from which they could not be caught.
For a man who once said of other golfers, "I look into their eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, I am going to bury you," he was proving to be one of golf's great team players.
The Ryder Cup was to become synonymous with Ballesteros. 1997 became Seve's Ryder Cup. For the first time it would be played in continental Europe and the Spanish course of Valderama would be the venue. Ballesteros was made European captain, a move which helped to ease the pain of that politically motivated snub of 1981. During three days in September, to the strains of the Gypsy Kings, Seve and his golf cart appeared to be everywhere. It was as if he wanted to play every shot. Even experienced tour veterans such as Colin Montgomerie couldn't escape from the Ballesteros 'coaching'. When it was clear European victory was in hand. Seve walked onto the final green and suggested to Monty that he sportingly concede Hoch's final putt. The Scotsman had hopes of beating Hoch outright and winning a full point, but reluctantly bowed to his captains request.
"It's a terrible thing to take the captaincy and possibly accept that means you're finished as a player. You could tell it hurt Seve Ballesteros. He still wanted to play.'' Monty commented.
If victory as Captain didn't taste as sweet as victory as a player, Ballesteros never showed it. "This will go down in history because I am the first non-British captain and first to win the Ryder Cup as a captain and a player. I'm the most-happy man in the world." He purred. That is how I like to remember Seve.
It's a sign of the respect in which he is held that all thoughts were on the thirteenth man when Europe retained the Ryder Cup at Medinah. When Olazabal broke down, hiding his tears behind his hat, and proclaimed "Seve, this is for you," he was speaking for an entire continent. Even after his passing, when it comes to the Ryder Cup and Europe, Seve is still the man.