Golf World Daily - July 19, 2012

from;the;british;open seve;and;life;lessons;from;lytham

each time i come to another british open, my mind goes back to the first one i attended as a golf writer, in 1988 at royal lytham & st. annes.

i remember my nervousness about my assignment, and how it increased when i used the favored writing machine of the day—the teleram portabubble—a breadbox-size word processor with a three-inch square screen and an infuriatingly fragile electronic memory. you didn’t just lose your current story when the temperamental machine went on the fritz, you lost every single file. all week long i typed with the yips.

it rained a lot, to the point that on saturday the links land flooded and the third round was washed out, setting up a rare monday finish. the week was historic, of course, for the performance of seve ballesteros, who won his fifth and final major with a closing 65.

it was much the same for me
with ballesteros. i had been
captured by him when he
won two masters and espe-
cially after his victory at the
1984 british open at st. an-
drews. His game and persona
were so stylish in every way,
and once i began covering
golf regularly, it became clear
that among his peers he held
a singular place. i remem-
ber Jay Haas saying he had
been skeptical of the myth,
but upon playing with seve
for the first time, graded him
“an a+.” mac o’grady liked
to say that “in a street fight,
against norman or any of
them, i’d take seve.”
magic returned at lytham.
ballesteros swashbuckled
an opening 67 in a gale, and
on monday morning trailed
nick price by two. what
ensued was perhaps the
finest round of ballesteros’
life, a 65 in which he hit 11
fairways and 15 greens, and
made every crucial putt to
hold off a very dogged price.

it was satisfying for the golf world because at the time, it seemed to return ballesteros to his rightful place at the top of the game, back ahead of greg norman and nick faldo and sandy lyle and other former subordinates who had overtaken him.

afterward, there were
predictions ballesteros, 31,
would regain his momen-
tum toward double digit
career majors. although
very happy, it was seve who
sounded a note of caution.
“yes, i won again, but you
know, it’s not so easy.”
my hotel was next to the
seedy amusement park on
the blackpool promenade.
i looked out a window onto
the bleak irish sea, with a
brownish hue that made
the cold gray waters of my
childhood home of san
francisco seem sparkling.

in the sports hall of fame in my head, ballesteros was much like my boyhood hero willie mays. because i didn’t follow mays obsessively until the mid 60s, i caught him on the downside of his greatness. He was still regarded as baseball’s best, but i mostly waited in vain for the youthful genius i had heard so much about to reemerge.

but after st. andrews, ballesteros stopped winning majors. He lost the 1986 and 1987 masters with late mistakes, and fell apart down the stretch at the 1987 pga. watching him, i thought of the mays of the late 60s, still good, but no longer the best, and beginning to slide.