Topic: Seve Ballesteros
Back in the day I used to watch and play a lot of golf.
You marvelled at the measured technique of the expert players, but as it is such an individual sport, you often identified with the players through their character or individual style.
Which is why Seve garnered millions of fans globally. While other players kept their emotion in check and battened down the hatches to grind out the result, Ballesteros was always the counterpoint.
Abandoning reason and caution when circumstances dictated it, he would take on the forces of nature of the game and we would follow him as he swashbuckled his way around a course.
When it was all good the titles and awards fell his way. It would go spectacularly wrong sometimes too but we loved him for that.
He wasn't the first to be afflicted by problems with his game. Putting is such an enormous part of the sport. When that goes wrong the greatest are humbled. But through it all, the bad times, he fought to maintain his place in the sport.
When he could no lead the field as an individual he did as a captain, and superbly so with the Ryder Cup team.
Golf isn't a game for everybody. In my time I've enjoyed it enormously but I understand those who don't get it. But I suggest they would only need to see someone like Seve Ballesteros in the flesh in his prime to get that greater understanding.
A sad loss at a relatively young age. But time will not wither the record of his achievements and the memory of his sporting prowess.
RIP
