seve ballesteros

This is radio interview with Seve Ballesteros talking to ex football player and currently BBC sports reporter Gary Lineker, who played for Leicester FC, Everton and Barcelona FC.

 

This a video interview with Seve Ballesteros  talking about his disease and his life.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tv_and_radio/inside_sport/8304388.stm

This is a superb newspaper article about him


My friend Seve


He played golf with a passion not seen before or since. Off the course he mixed great kindness with a volatile temper. Over 30 years, our writer has known him better than most. This is his story

Bill Elliott
The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009

Seve Ballesteros at the Open Championship at the Royal Lytham and St Annes Golf Club, Lancashire, July 1988. Photograph: David Cannon/Getty Images
Sportswriters have few heroes. Fans with laptops are as professionally uncool as they are emotionally unprofessional. Then there is the weary fact that we get to see the players up close and personal, and few of them pass any major personality test. Most successful sportspeople are as one-dimensional as they are talented. It goes with the job; hell, it's why they are good at the job.

For me, now towards the blunt end of a sportswriting career that began 40 years ago, there have been only three heroes: Muhammad Ali, George Best and Severiano Ballesteros. Each had character to equal their talent. It may have been difficult actually to live with any of them, but it was impossible not to be a fan.

Now only a struggling Seve and a diminished Ali remain. While George's long descent to the grave was inevitable, Seve's fight against the ravaging effects of a brain tumour at 51 years of age is shocking. It is well over a decade since he was able to grace the closing holes of a major championship (his appetite for golf remained vibrant but his ability to play it was blunted by a spinal problem), yet that does not matter. Losing Seve as a player is one thing, losing him so prematurely as a man would have been another.

And what we nearly lost is a unique personality, a man whose quixotic tendency is not so much to tilt at windmills as to put his boot into them, and almost everything else that does not immediately bend to his will.

I first met him in a Southport restaurant in 1976, when a journalist chum introduced us a few days before that year's Open Championship began at Royal Birkdale. At 19, he was impossibly young for the tournament, and improbably handsome. He was also gauche, awkward and spoke very little English. 'Keep your eye on him,' my pal said. 'He looks like he could be special.'

By the end of that week a large part of the sporting world had met Seve Ballesteros. He had plundered his way across the old links playing the sort of outrageous, uncoachable golf that was to be his trademark. He tied for second alongside Jack Nicklaus, while Johnny Miller was champion. European golf would never be the same.

In 1979 he was back in Lancashire, this time at Royal Lytham, and this time he was the Open champ. 'O-bloody-lé,' roared a local, broad-vowel accent as Seve made his way on to the final green, holed his winning putt and began to cry in the arms of his brothers. It was the first of five majors - three Opens and two Masters - as he swaggered his way through the game over the next decade. And, as it happens, we became friends.

The first of those Masters wins came the following spring. By now he was an acknowledged phenomenon. He played golf like we all did, spraying the ball hither and thither, but, unlike us, he then recovered brilliantly. We loved him for his vulnerability. He brought a passion to golf that it never had before and has not enjoyed since. He made this stuffy old game seem sexy and exciting, so that men yearned to be him and women simply wanted to be with him. He was the godfather of the modern European Tour, moving the interest from golf lovers to general sports fans and non-sports-fans alike, and encouraging serious money into the game.

Before that 1980 Masters began I watched from the clubhouse at Augusta as he finished a practice round, several thousand fans embroidering the scene. It took him ages to make his way through the punters to the clubhouse and when he finally made it he looked at me and gave a huge grin. He held out his hand and when I held out mine he dropped several scraps of paper into it and laughed. Each contained a girl's name and a phone number. 'These people are crazy, eh?' he said. His English was much better by then.

When he won his Green Jacket, he invited the British journalists to join him that evening at his rented house for a celebration party. We arrived before he had returned from various duties at the club; there were maybe 20 people in total, most from his Spanish entourage. When he turned up Seve was wearing his new club blazer, a white shirt and an Augusta member's tie. I have never seen anyone look happier or healthier. If he had been a labrador his nose would have been dripping. At 23, he was king of his world. When I mentioned something along these lines, his face darkened and he told me to follow him. We moved into the kitchen where the connecting door to the garage had been removed and replaced by a trapeze.

'See this,' he said. 'I must hang upside down from this for 20 minutes each morning to try to stretch my back. Every day I have pain. Healthy? No, not healthy.' And he made me try it for a few minutes. A few minutes was all I could stand. Even in the earliest days of his success Seve knew that, for him, a long career was almost certainly out of the question. The fact is that he never played totally pain-free. The other fact is that opponents never realised this. Like Tiger Woods now, his default position was never to show any weakness if he could help it.

It was different when it came to complaining. As a player, Seve was one of life's world-class whingers. Like John McEnroe on the tennis court he fed off perceived slights. Top of his list was the entire United States. He disliked the country, the food, the other players, the way MCs announced him on tees as 'Steve' Ballesteros.

And he absolutely hated the American media's portrayal of him as some hick, get-lucky Spaniard who had won his first Open at Lytham despite slicing his drive on the 16th tee into a car park. He had a point - because he had then finessed his ball on to the green and holed the birdie putt, which seemed to have escaped their notice. It was a resentment that helped fuel him when he led Europe in the Ryder Cup. Nothing pleased him more than whacking the Yanks in their own backyard. Or, indeed, anywhere.

At one US Open I was with his group when he hit an approach shot to a distant green only for his ball to be tossed into a bunker by the breeze. When we got there his ball was horribly plugged in the sand. He glared at me for a few seconds before muttering: 'Fucking lucky? Why do they call me fucking lucky? Shit.' He almost holed the bunker shot. As he clambered back out I suggested he was indeed a bit lucky. He stopped, grinned and said: 'Maybe a bit but I'm good too. Yes?'

No pal, you were not good; more often than not you were brilliant. Mostly, however, his attraction lay in his looks, his rakish charisma and his desire to involve us all in his journey. At one press conference he told us very seriously that we were all 'the same family' and so we must rejoice in our mutual successes. While Nick Faldo kept us at bay, Seve bought us tickets for the best seats to watch the show and then asked us backstage afterwards. Faldo got respect, Ballesteros got affection. It was what it was.

Sometimes, however, the dark moods he is prone to came between us. Such a moment came at an Irish Open in the mid-Eighties. By then Seve was the most in-demand golfer in the world. He was also in full combat mode when it came to his relationship with the US Tour and that circuit's boss, Deane Beman. Beman had been a decent player himself, with four Tour victories. He was as abrasive and determined a character as Seve and when he decreed that 'foreigners' must commit fully to the American circuit if they wished to play - that they entered at least 15 events and that they must request permission to return, in Ballesteros's case, to Europe - Seve boiled over.

Beman, on holiday in Ireland, had been invited by the Irish Open organisers to play. Seve came in for a pre-tournament press conference and expressed his displeasure: 'Beman is taking a place that should be reserved for a player who needs the money. He should not be here.'

When he left the media centre I walked with him to ask his feelings about Beman. He stopped and glared at me, his face contorting in rage. 'Deane Beman?' he snorted. 'Deane Beman? Why you ask? You are trying to upset me. I don't want to talk about this man. I think of him when I go to sleep and I am still thinking of him when I wake up. Fuck him. And you.'

As he spoke those last words his right fist curled and he pulled his arm back. I thought, 'Christ, he's going to hit me.' The security guard with us thought so too and stepped aside to allow him a better swing. Then his arm relaxed and he turned swiftly. He strode away muttering.

That, I thought, was obviously the end of whatever friendship we enjoyed. Next day after his round, he was in front of the reporters again. I sat at the back and sulked, and determined not to ask any questions. When the press conference was over I stood up to walk out.

'Beel, Beel, we must speak,' Seve said urgently. 'Please.' Reluctantly I turned back. He grabbed me by both arms and moved close so only I could hear what he was saying. 'I want to say sorry for yesterday. I should not have spoken to you like that and acted as I did. But Beman upsets me, you know. I was wrong and I am sorry.' He offered an embrace and I accepted. Who wouldn't? Now, though, I felt sorry for him and so I said something about my wife speaking to me all the time like that. His face grew more serious and he moved in close again. 'That is OK for your wife but not for me. Never for me.' Our friendship never looked back.

Ryder Cup matches had, understandably, meant nothing to him when he first turned professional. Back then it was Great Britain & Ireland versus the United States, so for Seve the Ryder Cup meant no more than a week off. But Jack Nicklaus, worried that routinely monotonous American victories were threatening the competition's future, urged the British PGA to open the team out to the continental golfers, inspired, he admits, by the emergence of Seve.

By 1979 it was Europe who took on the Americans in West Virginia. Once again they lost. Two years later, Seve, caught in the middle of an ugly public row over appearance money, was left out of the home side as a punishment. Once again the USA won easily.

In 1983, Tony Jacklin took on the role as captain only after the PGA met his demands that the players had the best of everything. Previously they had flown economy and had to wear ill-fitting and shoddy official gear. Under Jacklin the clothes improved and they flew Concorde.

At the centre of his plan, however, was the return of Ballesteros to the side. More than that, he wanted Seve to be the on-course leader. Proud as ever, Seve took some convincing. Once persuaded, though, he gave his role everything. Again Europe lost, but it was close - 14 1/2 to 13 1/2 - and when the players gathered in their locker-room Seve spent 20 minutes telling them that they now knew they could beat the USA. Two years later at The Belfry Europe finally won - the first time since 1957 the Americans had lost. Champagne was sprayed everywhere, Concorde did a victory fly-past, a military band played 'Land of Hope and Glory' and the modern Ryder Cup era began. Led by Seve, everybody cried.

In total, he played in eight competitions - three victories, one halved - before skippering the team to another win in 1997 at Valderrama on the Costa del Sol. He was beside himself with excitement and determination that week in Spain. Existing on an average two hours' sleep a night he coaxed, cajoled and often irritated many of his team members. But, crucially, they still played for him. Defeat in his home country was unthinkable and he transplanted his desire to everyone. The American captain, Tom Kite, subdued and bespectacled, never stood a chance.

By then, Seve's stature as a contender on the world's bigger stages was all but gone. He did not know it at the time but, at just 40, his playing future was behind him and his 43rd placing in the 1996 Masters was to be the last time he made the halfway cut in a major. Some record, though. Those five majors, 50 wins on the European Tour and 37 titles elsewhere in the world. No European, so far, can compare to that CV. In terms of style, no one ever will.

David Feherty, a witty, articulate Ulsterman good enough to play in the 1991 Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island and now an analyst on American TV, has no doubt that Ballesteros was the finest player of a brilliant generation. 'I wasn't sure I was good enough to be playing in that Ryder Cup, but on the first morning Seve backed me up against a wall and spent 10 minutes telling me I was a great golfer. I remember thinking, "Bloody hell, here is the greatest player in the world telling me I'm great. Bring it on baby, bring it on." I was too frightened about letting Seve down not to play half-decently that week. Believe me, he is special. If I could have married him I would have.'

In 1983 Seve met and courted Carmen Botin. He was 26, she was a teenager. Carmen's family owned the Bank of Santander, she spoke half a dozen languages and was finishing off her education at a convent boarding school near Ascot. The gulf in Spanish class was huge. So, too, were her family's initial misgivings about this match. Their first date was afternoon tea at a prim Surrey hotel. A chaperone sat nearby.

It was the day after this meeting that he told me about his new love. I knew he had been fretting about not having a regular girlfriend and potential wife, because as he played with my own sons he said that he, too, wanted a family; he worried that he was going to be 'too old to play football or golf with them'. Despite initial Botin family misgivings, Carmen and Seve married in 1988 and had three kids, Javier Baldomero, Miguel and Carmen. They split up a few years ago due to Seve's increasingly erratic behaviour and, apparently, some philandering. Carmen, however, was at his hospital bedside in Madrid during the bleakest moments after he collapsed at a Madrid airport in early October. In all he needed four brain operations before he was allowed to leave hospital in December, to recuperate at home in Pedreña on Spain's northern coast, with further treatment to come. He was, he admits, at times 'a rebel patient' and after praising his medical team he sent his apologies to them. No change there then.

It has been a constant regret to him that his sons and daughter never got to see him play at his best, although Baldomero did get to caddie for him at the 2006 Open. Seve narrowly missed the halfway cut, but his son was wide-eyed afterwards when he spoke of the constant affection and support for his father as they walked Royal Liverpool. It was his last significant appearance as a player. The following summer he turned up at Carnoustie to deny reports of a suicide attempt and to announce his retirement from the game.

He was a diminished figure that Monday in Scotland, but he was still Seve. The eyes no longer burned brightly but he was still genuinely amusing in a language that was foreign to him. Mostly, however, he was sad. Sad that his great adventure had ended, sad that he had to deny suicide, sad that he would no longer be coming in to see us and to chat about this, that and everything.

We embraced outside the big tent before he left. As he walked away, slightly stooped and limping from some injury or other, a dank, grey afternoon was suddenly illuminated by shafts of sunlight so that he was silhouetted against the skyline. I swear he seemed to straighten up and to walk more purposefully as this light bathed him. But it might have been wishful thinking on my part.

He told me he was looking forward to his future. 'Life changes,' he said. 'We never know what tomorrow will bring, so we must enjoy ourselves today.' And he pulled the hat I was wearing down over my eyes and laughed.

I could not help remembering years earlier when he came across me while I was playing a round at Crans-sur-Sierre, high on a Swiss Alp. I had hooked my opening tee shot on to the middle of the adjoining 9th fairway, under the low hanging branches of an umbrella pine that bizarrely grows there. For some reason I had a five-iron in my hand as I surveyed this impossible situation and noted the bank of high trees between me and where my ball should be.

Then a familiar figure ducked under the pine. 'Beel, Beel, quick, give me,' and Seve took the five-iron off me, gripped the club down the shaft, bent almost double and then smacked my ball away. Up it went, over the trees before halting, hesitating, and turning left to plunge 90 degrees and down towards the 1st green some 180 yards distant. It was a wonderfully improbable blow.

My playing partners could see none of this but from the other side of all those trees the roars of astonished approval hit the air. 'That was one of the best shots I've ever seen,' said John Paramour, now the European Tour's chief referee. Several hours later, back in the clubhouse, I admitted that it had been the greatest shot I'd never hit. No one, as it turned out, minded.

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