Seve Ballesteros: The Most Exciting Golfer Who Ever Lived
Severiano Ballesteros was born in 1957 in Pedrena, a small village on the north coast of Spain. He learned the game with a single club — a cut-down 3-iron — hitting shots on the beach and in the fields around his father's farm. He turned professional at 17. He won five major championships. He is the most exciting golfer who ever played the game, and there is not a close second.
The Player
Seve hit the ball with a combination of power and imagination that no other player has replicated. He was, by any objective measure, the most creative shotmaker in the history of the professional game — capable of manufacturing shots from positions that other players would have chipped out sideways, finding angles and trajectories that existed only in his mind until he executed them. His short game was so extraordinary that his colleagues described it as operating by different rules than theirs.
He was also spectacularly erratic off the tee. The famous story of his 1979 Open Championship win at Royal Lytham — where he spent much of the final round in car parks, bunkers, and rough that other players weren't aware existed — captures both halves of his game perfectly. He lost the fairway and found a way. He always found a way.
The Major Championships
Seve won five major championships: two Masters titles (1980, 1983) and three Open Championships (1979, 1984, 1988). His 1984 Open Championship at St Andrews — where he made a birdie putt on the 18th hole and raised his arm before the ball dropped — produced one of golf's most reproduced images. His 1988 Open at Royal Lytham, where he played what many consider the greatest final round in major championship history, remains the standard for sustained excellence under pressure.
He contended in US Opens and PGA Championships throughout his career but never won either. The American major venues, with their emphasis on precision off the tee, worked against the way his game was built.
The Ryder Cup
Seve transformed the Ryder Cup. Before his generation, the event was a mismatch — America won consistently and comprehensively. Seve's ferocity, his team leadership, his willingness to make the matches personal, and the Spanish-American tension he brought to the proceedings turned the Ryder Cup from a golf exercise into a sporting event. He went 20-12-5 as a player. He captained the European team to victory at Valderrama in 1997. The European Tour's ascendance as a force in professional golf is inseparable from Seve's career.
The Legacy
Seve died in May 2011 from a brain tumor, age 54. European golf has not produced another player with his combination of talent and personality since. The players he influenced — Jose Maria Olazabal, who partnered with him in Ryder Cup fourball and foursomes to a combined record of 11-2-2, among others — speak about him in terms that suggest contact with something more than a good golfer.
Golf is better when its greatest players are exciting to watch. Seve Ballesteros was the most exciting of all of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many majors did Seve Ballesteros win?
Seve Ballesteros won five major championships: two Masters titles (1980 and 1983) and three Open Championships (1979 at Royal Lytham, 1984 at St Andrews, and 1988 at Royal Lytham).
Why is Seve Ballesteros considered so great?
Ballesteros is considered great for his combination of five major championship victories, his Ryder Cup leadership (transforming the event into genuine competition), his unique creativity as a shotmaker, and his magnetism as a personality that drew audiences to the sport who wouldn't otherwise have watched.