He had recently come to the conclusion that there were no secrets to golf or life. “It’s more a matter of being constant in what you are doing and working hard,” he advised.
AFP
Never boring: Ballesteros often saw parts of the golf course that few other players did, but it was his powers of recovery that made him so special to watch 36
HK Golfer・APR 2012
The following year, Seve launched a physical attack on European Tour referee José María Zamora at the Spanish Open, which was played at him home course at Pedreña. It happened in front of representatives from the Spanish Federation and club members. Those who were there were inclined to link it to the goings-on in Italy the previous year but there was another school of thought, namely that it had more to do with the frustration born of his disintegrating marriage – he and Carmen were divorced in 2004 – and his fading game. At one point in that dark period, he had admitted that the biggest mistake he had ever made was to start playing golf in earnest at 16. “I lost all my growing up years,” he reflected. There were those who felt that the European Tour should have given him some kind of ambassadorial role, one which would have taken the place of the golf which had been his life. The impression garnered from our Monday morning conversation – that Ballesteros had
found himself and was set to make the best of life’s inward half – remained gloriously intact until the Masters got under way. Then, he handed in an 86 via rough and trees which left him last but one. On the Friday, he improved to an 80 but that only served to leave him absolutely at the bottom of the heap. “In my first round, everything went wrong 100 times over. Today was not quite so bad. I was quite pleased with the way I controlled my nerves,” he said, in a bid to find a positive. When he left, he was altogether less certain about playing on the Champions Tour, with the same applying to whether or not he would return to Augusta. He did play one event on the senior circuit before realising that he was way out of his depth, but he never did return to Augusta. Where, in 2007, he had stood proudly in a group of 28 past Champions for the traditional photo call ahead of the Champions Dinner, there was no sign of him in the picture of 2008, the year when his brain tumour was diagnosed in the autumn. It was prior to last year’s Champions Dinner that Ballesteros charged his old Ryder Cup comrade-in-arms, José María Olazábal, to send his good wishes to everyone at the table. Olazábal did as much amid an atmosphere in which everyone knew the end was nigh. It came just one month later. HKGOLFER.COM