The passing of Seve Ballesteros in May last year was inevitable. He’d been dying a slow and painful death for several years with a cancerous brain tumour and not even the magic he displayed in getting out of seemingly impossible situations on the golf course could save him.
As a three-times British Open champion, he so desperately wanted to attend the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest champion but was so ill he couldn’t make the trip. He sent a video message to his fellow past champions to be played at their annual dinner and, from all reports, even the toughest nut among them was reduced to tears.
Yet, when Ballesteros could fight the wretched illness no more, the golfing world wept. Some of the younger players who’d never seen him in action, but only on their TV sets in old re-runs of some of his masterly strokes of genius, were gutted too.
To know Ballesteros was to love him; they’d never known Seve, but they loved him too.
So it was that the biennial Ryder Cup between the Americans and Europeans came to pass in the city of Chicago at the Medinah Country Club last weekend. Golfers talk of the 15th club in their bag – what lies between both ears that is the mind – but the Europeans took a 13th player into the Ryder Cup – and that was Ballesteros.
A sky writer had flown above and the banner, The Spirit of Seve, crossed the heavens and the vapour of those words stayed there longer than they should in one of the windiest cities I’ve ever encountered, Melbourne and Wellington being the possible exceptions.
The Europeans had a silhouetted image of Seve on their golf bags, they had the tag, Seve Ballesteros, 1957-2011, on their shirtsleeves and they wore the Spanish maestro’s trademark navy and white in the final day of singles play. They played the phone call Seve made to the European team during the last Ryder Cup encounter at Celtic Manor in Wales.
I’ve never been enamoured by the Ryder Cup, unlike my European and American writing colleagues, but what we saw in that final round when the Europeans came back for a 6-10 deficit to retain the cup was golfing theatre at its very, very best. And, so was the golf. It was like the final round of the US Masters – especially last year when Charl Schwartzel won with four straight birdies to finish while the likes of our own Jason Day, Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy made shots they’ve seldom made before – but even more so.
There were so many heroes among the Europeans. To name several would be to dismiss the others. Maybe Ian Poulter who finished with straight birdies in the last match of the fourball on the Saturday with Rory McIlroy to defeat Jason Duffner and Zach Johnson one up.
And, then there was the European captain Jose Maria Olazabal when, finally, the TV interviewer could thrust a microphone to his mouth. Ollie spoke of Seve, and choked. He pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes to hide the tears of emotion and his memories of his great mate.
Golf is an individual sport, yet last weekend we saw 12 players from nine different countries unite in a team competition and we saw the passion in their play and the emotion pour when all was done. It was truly magnificent and, might I add, so very similar to the Sydney Swans victory over Hawthorn a couple of days earlier.
Some of the churlish in the American media contingent suggested Italian Francesco Molinari, playing in the final singles match against former world Nor 1 Tiger Woods, should have conceded a putt of a little over a metre on the 18th green to give Woods victory to let the tie be a 14-14 affair with the Europeans having retained the cup by virtue of holding it.
Why, for goodness sake? Woods missed the putt and his match was halved with Molinari to make the final score 14 and a half to thirteen and a half. And overall win to retain the Cup is far better than a tie and retention of the silverware purely because it was won last time round.
Woods, to his credit, made no bones about it. He said in his brief interview when the European commotion had settled down: “My putt was useless. It was inconsequential. So, I hit it too quickly, and gave him his putt (Molinari was just inside him and the putt was equally able to be missed) and it was already over.”
What mattered most was that golf was very definitely the winner. The opposing players were respectful to each other, unlike some of the ugly scenes of past cup matches, despite the rowdy parochial US crowd and, well, quite simply it was bloody marvellous stuff.