The child whose game became a revolution

A few weeks ago, gazing across the beautiful course at Pedre?a, Ram¨®n Sota recalled for this newspaper the first sporting steps taken by his nephew Severiano. "He was a child, but you could already spot the genius in him," recalled Sota.

"As I had done, he fed himself on golf in secret, playing in the places where a boy like him was not allowed to - at night with the full moon, along the lanes and when he ducked out of school. [...] He had the same love for golf as I did. But there was something different in him, something unique: he had an imagination for the sport that I had never seen in anybody else. He could see things that nobody else could."

Sota was himself a pioneer of Spanish golf, the first who could go toe-to-toe with the great global players, such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. His nephew Severiano - just as headstrong and stubborn as his uncle, as hard as the stone that gives the Cantabrian town of Pedre?a its name, and as strong as its salted, seafaring people - went much, much further. He was a revolutionary and considered one of the greatest Spanish sports star to ever live. Ballesteros died on Saturday, after a three-year battle with brain cancer. He was 54.

On the shore of Santander's bay on April 9, 1957, Ballesteros was born into a family that lived off the land, and from looking after the health of the greens at the local course. His first clubs were improvised affairs, essentially homemade gadgets sufficient to nourish the hunger for the game that would pang ever harder in the young boy's gut. Only a prodigious pair of hands and a mind capable to see beyond what was patently obvious would get so much life from such rudimentary tools.

The 40 pesetas he would earn as a caddie for one of the aristocratic golfers playing a round at Pedre?a instilled in the young Seve the value of working hard, the determination that would accompany him throughout his career and his life. Seve, like his uncle Ram¨®n, learned to make his own way, stubbornly self-taught to the point of not wishing to take any advice from anyone, not even his own uncle.

His pride led him to note carefully who had helped him - such as his patron for a time, cardiologist C¨¦sar Campuzano - and who had not. Later on, his success would give him the opportunity to settle his accounts and make clear he knew who his friends had been.

The boy who played in the sand on the beach or, whenever possible, on the greens of the lords and dukes, turned professional at the age of 16 as the Franco regime entered its final era. No sooner had he started competing than he started to win.

The Vizcaya Open, the first Spanish championship. Word quickly spread throughout the whole country that there was this boy from Pedre?a who was an ace at that sport with a foreign name and with British traditions. But young Seve broke away from the fuss and made a whole new space for himself by starting from scratch. He went abroad. And so it was that the name "Seve" began to make the headlines.

That proud, solitary reaction that Ballesteros felt toward his triumphs in Spain, and the love that Britain offered to him in such an immediate and spontaneous way, distinguished him as a golfer and as a person. His ability to improvise, often seeming to make the impossible shot come true, and the intense passion he displayed while doing so, opened up hearts in almost every household in a country where golf is anything but a peculiar pastime.

Placing second at the 1975 British Open was the definitive basis from which a legend would be born. His three posterior titles at the British Open, played at the seaside links courses he was so at home on, besides his two US Masters victories at Augusta, Georgia, the Prince of Asturias sports prize, two Ryder Cup triumphs as a player and another as captain, and a place at the World Golf Hall of Fame, in St. Augustine, Florida, all served to forge that legend.

In golfing terms, Seve always felt closer to the British Isles, and it was there that he was most at home and where he eventually announced his retirement from the sport.

Ballesteros' importance, however, goes far beyond his long list of triumphs, impressive as it unarguably is. Seve was a rebellious revolutionary. He never felt inferior to any other person. That pride was what he instilled in the blood of the other European players to turn and face the Americans and strip away from them their long-possessed Ryder Cup, which he did as captain during the magical weekend at Valderrama, Spain, in 1997, the first time the competition had been held outside Britain and the United States.

He was the biggest reason that the Ryder Cup became the major world sporting event it now is. And it was Seve who fought to negotiate better prizes and appearance money for his fellow pros, also contributing to making the sport what it is today.

He changed golf forever and became the idol, not just of his own generation, but also of later crops of players. Seve was the master of them all - a captain, an icon and a genius.

It was no casual coincidence that Phil Mickelson served paella in his honor at the latest US Masters. That child who at the age of nine managed to fashion for himself a club, a ball and a hole to play with through those Pedre?a afternoons, the boy who wanted nobody's advice and whose toughness of character was only matched by his passion for golf, became one of the legends of world sport.