Links Magazine | The Best Of Golf | Seve and Everything After

“Needless to say,” recalls Leadbetter, “he missed the cut and shot a million. He came up to me in Japan two weeks later and said, ‘David, I just want to thank you for last year. I know I play well but that’s too mechanical. I have to be natural.’”

Thus Ballesteros began the long, slow tumble to his present 1,106th (at this writing) in the world rankings. Along the way he has visited every quack and guru around in a bid to save his game, even enlisting the aid of Mac O’Grady, with whom he made a bizarre pilgrimage into the desert to bury old memories. Nothing has helped. The last time he made the cut at Augusta was 1996, and he was sidelined for most of 2004 due to crippling back pain. Over the past decade there have been plenty of exquisite moments—mostly during the Ryder Cup—but there have been whole years of flailing clubs in tall rough, black scowls and furrowed brows.

Most golfers in Ballesteros’ position are subject to the laws of natural selection. Either they lose their exemptions and are booted off the tour or, in the case of major champions like Ian Baker-Finch, they gut it out for as long as they can before retiring to take up a less-stressful pursuit such as TV broadcasting. But Ballesteros has chosen to continue, for reasons his peers find impossible to comprehend.

“He’s madder than a box of pit bulls,” is Feherty’s blunt opinion. “He’s completely lost his mind. It’s just a shame that he has kept playing. Why does he torture himself like that?”

To Mark James the specter is equally confounding. “It’s inconceivable that someone who’s won five majors and played so well for so long can suddenly play so badly for 10 years,” says James. “It’s almost unique.”

Leadbetter at least partially blames Ballesteros’ contentious nature. “He seems to be very bitter in many ways—all of these fights and what have you. It’s totally unnecessary. He’s got a lot of things to be grateful for. It comes down to what’s going to make you happy. If it’s only going to make you happy to make birdies every hole, you’re in for a sad life, aren’t you?”

In the midst of his battle to take the Ryder Cup to Spain, Ballesteros observed, “When a tree falls down, a lot of people want to take a cut out of it. My feeling is that this is what is happening. I have only one way to go and that’s to reach the top again. Then I’ll have my power back.”

Like his website remark about great disappointments, it was a statement that spoke volumes, carrying as it did the implication that if his name wasn’t at the top of the leaderboard, he would not be afforded the respect he deserves as the man who rescued the Ryder Cup and put European golf on the map. As with Frank Capra’s altruistic hero George Bailey, who saved his brother from drowning and performed countless deeds for the good of his fellow citizens, one gets the feeling that, at the core of Ballesteros’ dark resentment, is the belief that, after working tirelessly to help others to glory, his own glory has been underrated or gone unfulfilled.

Despite his recent divorce, despite his angry insistence that the world is conspiring against him, despite all the distractions—Ballesteros still has charisma, still has magic, still has the power to seduce an audience. He is the archetypal flawed genius, the kind we fall in love with. “There are many good players but they are not champions in their hearts,” Seve once told me. “To be a champion it has to be inside. Some people, they have that naturally, and other people they don’t. That’s why they don’t become champions.”

It’s natural for any public figure who hears vocal criticism to feel that their truest, best self remains invisible to the public, Ballesteros being no exception. Meanwhile, there is a lengthy list of athletes and performers whose characters have come across in ways the public finds understandable and at least reasonably admirable. Because they enjoy widespread acceptance, these celebrities have an easier time of it when their careers and performances falter. In the end, no matter how embraced or how embattled you are, the historical record of accomplishments probably matters most.

“One thing’s for sure, they’re never going to be able to take his record away,” says Leadbetter. “People can say what they like, but he’s been there and done it.”

Back muscles willing, 2005 will, Ballesteros insists, be the year he becomes a champion again at the Masters. Come April, he’ll be prowling Bobby Jones’ emerald fairways in a quest for a victory only he believes he can attain, chained to Augusta by a promise to a dying man, fighting to restore his place in the game he loves more than life.