Seve Ballesteros

By Gary Lloyd
Love of Sports Correspondent

He retired from competitive golf in 2007 because of continual back injuries, but the game of Seve Ballesteros goes back to the mid 1970s.

In 1976, at the age of 19, Ballesteros finished as the runner-up at the British Open, and that was just the beginning of his success.

Between 1979 and 1988, Seve won five major tournaments. He took the aforementioned British Open three times and the Masters twice. Not a bad “full house” of majors for a guy that played most of his golf on the European Tour. Combine those majors with the 49 events he won in Europe, nine on the PGA Tour and six on the Japanese Tour, and it’s obvious he was a force wherever he teed the ball up.

I don’t recall ever watching Ballesteros taking a practice swing or lining up a putt (probably because I was just a bit too young), but by all accounts he was a charismatic, risk-taking player. I love those characteristics in a golfer. I understand the methodical aspect of this tediously difficult game, but it’s always nice to go to a tournament in which a pro is going to have some carefree fun. Take Chi-Chi Rodriguez, for instance.

But Seve was different from the rest. He was a very imaginative player, especially around the greens. He had to be, because frankly, he wasn’t solid off the tee.

Of his long game, he said, “I’d like to see the fairways more narrow. Then everyone would have to play from the rough, not just me.”

In his first major victory, the 1979 British Open, he even birdied a hole in which he played the ball off the pavement of a parking lot. Bad tee shot? Probably. Unbelievable imagination? Without a doubt.

Despite his charismatic attitude, Seve had a will to win that matches that of Tiger Woods.

“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 once said.

So, yeah, he was carefree and creative on the outside, but on the inside, he wanted to beat the field like a drum. Can’t ask of any more from a golfer than that. At least I can’t.

Now, understand something about me to understand something about Seve. Basketball is the cheese to my macaroni, so I therefore know more about it than golf, baseball and whatever else. In the basketball world, I hear the phrase “Old School” in relation to deprived kids growing up with just a ragged basketball in say, the Bronx. They don’t have much else besides that ball and they play on an old, beat up playground.

Seve, in the golf world, grew up near beaches in Spain. He began his playing days by hitting pebbles on a beach with a three iron.

Stickball in the street using lawn chairs as bases. Now that’s Old School.

Streetball on the playgrounds shooting at goals with no nets? Old School.

Crisply striking pebbles on a beach with a beat up three iron? Definitely Old School.

And that’s why Seve Ballesteros gets some Old School Love from us today.