Thanks for the memories
Dan Davies explains how watching Seve made him fall in love with the game of golf, and why he remains devoted to the Spaniard to this day
The first time I saw Seve in the flesh was at Wentworth on a rain-sodden day in 1982. I was 11 years old and a recent convert to golf. Mud squelched underfoot and puddles formed across the manicured acres of the Burma Road, but I could not take my eyes off the feline figure who prowled and scowled and illuminated the gloom with his beautiful swing and dazzling smile.
Seve was up against Sandy Lyle, a home favourite, in the final of the Suntory World Matchplay Championship and yet most people in the crowd were pulling for the Spaniard. “I always found it a very special experience playing in the British Isles,” Seve explained in his autobiography a quarter of a century later. From his first round at Royal St George’s in 1975, he said he had “felt loved and appreciated by the British press and public. They treated me well as soon as they got to know me.” At Wentworth, it was the same. Seve triumphed on the 37th hole, retaining his title and winning the heart of one impressionable boy in the crowd.
Within a year I was hooked, staying up late to watch the climax of the Ryder Cup at PGA National in Florida on television. Seve was Europe’s driving force, having been talked into playing by team captain
Tony Jacklin and then by his three brothers. I have distinct memories: Jack Nicklaus kissing Lanny Wadkins’ divot, Bernard Gallacher making a mess of the 17th to lose out to Tom Watson and hand victory to the Americans, and Seve in the opening singles match, stepping into a fairway bunker, taking out his Tony Penna 3-wood and launching an Exocet that moved some 50 yards in the air before finding the green. No footage seems to have survived of the shot – one that Nicklaus described as “the greatest shot I ever saw” – so I will just have to make do with the memory, whether invented or not.
An explosion of joy
There are no doubts whatsoever about the next moment that confirmed Seve’s place in my affections. In the summer of 1984, we had just got home from a family holiday. Piling into the house, I turned on the TV to see the sunbaked Old Course and Seve pulling on his famous navy-blue sweater.
After Seve secured par at the Road Hole, it was down to just him and Tom Watson, winner of five of the last nine Opens. A 3-wood off the tee on 18 left a sand wedge in. I still love watching that shot – a study in total commitment, dust flying up from the ancient turf.
And then, of course, the birdie putt, which hung on the lip before toppling in, prompting an explosion of joy that tore through the record crowds. Seve described it as “the happiest moment of my entire sporting life”. His celebration still makes my skin tingle 37 years on.
I wonder how many young golfers across the world were inspired by Seve in that moment. A year later, four of them took the train to Sandwich to watch him defend his title. The Friday of Open week was savage – wind-swept and wet – but the weather didn’t bother us. I made a beeline for my hero, who had opened with a disappointing 75. When I located him, his mood was as black as the clouds scudding in from the English Channel.
One shot summed up that day and the range of emotions that Seve brought to the game. It was taken by photographer Chris Smith, whose iconic frame shows the champion snarling at the elements and his misfortune while wearing his rain jacket across his chest like a matador’s cape.
By this stage I, like millions of others, had come to recognise The Masters as the starting pistol for the golf season. In the 1980s, the anticipation of all that lay ahead was enhanced by the promise of Seve making a run at Augusta. He’d won in ’80 and ’83, and had finished tied third in ’82 and second in ’85.
In April 1986, however, Seve arrived in Georgia with only seven competitive rounds under his belt. His usual preparation had been
“I wonder how many young golfers across the world were inspired by Seve in that moment”
thrown into disarray by a PGA Tour ban for refusing to play in the required 15 events and by his father’s death shortly before the tournament. He was a man on a mission, and played as such.
Dressed on the final day in an electric blue polo shirt and a visor featuring not one but two Nike logos (he’d cut them out of shirts and stuck them to an Augusta National visor), Seve appeared to have one arm in the Green Jacket as he stood in the 15th fairway. If the putt on the final green at St Andrews was his greatest shot, the fat 4-iron, which dived into the pond guarding the green, was the stroke that haunted him. He maintained it was the difference between winning five Majors and ten.
An artist at work
Seve inspired in me a level of devotion that I had not previously experienced outside of team sports. “I like to think that there is much more to being a champion than simply being a good golfer and winning tournaments,” he wrote in 2007. “If I
had to define myself, I would say I have tried to play golf as if I were an artist. That’s why the way I played excited and enthused the general public and why many became fans of the game or took it up themselves. I’ve always felt I should behave like an actor on the course and perform for the public. It’s what Arnold Palmer did… You must display your emotions, because then the public feels close to you.”
We lived his drama, celebrated his triumphs and suffered his setbacks. If Augusta had become a curse by the late ’80s, the Ryder
Cup more than compensated. In 1987, I caught the tube to Heathrow with a school friend to welcome the European Ryder Cup team home after the historic victory at Muirfield Village. We were both in love with the game and with the cadre of players now regularly turning the tables on the Americans.
In Europe’s first win on American soil, Seve had again been the talisman, partnering Jose Maria Olazabal, who he had first played with in a charity match when the tyro from Fuenterrabia was just 15 years old. “Something really special happened that day,” Olazabal reflected. “I don’t know what it was but it was truly special.” The same could be said of what transpired in Ohio, and of the wild scenes when the players walked into the arrivals hall at Heathrow. Olazabal described Seve as “a big brother”. In truth, he felt like that to all of us.
And then came Royal Lytham in 1988 and what Seve described as
the “finest round of my career”, a scintillating six-under-par 65 to win the 118th Open. Played on a Monday because of bad weather, it required him to draw on his deepest reserves of guts, skill and desire.
He was up against two men – defending champion Nick Faldo and Zimbabwean Nick Price. Between them, this three-ball laid claim to six of the nine Opens between 1984 and 1992, and on that grey afternoon on the Lancashire coast they produced a plethora of stunning shots. None, though, was as magnificent as the
chip Seve caressed from a hollow to the left of the 18th green. I still cannot fathom how the ball kissed the hole and yet failed to drop.
Beginning of the end
Seve’s third Open and fifth Major title proved to be his last. From that point on, he likened balancing his desire to stay at the top of the sport, the difficulties caused by his ailing back and the new demands of marriage and fatherhood to riding a rollercoaster. The ride contained peaks, such as a 50th European Tour title in 1992, which briefly made him the leading prize-money winner in golf history, and deep troughs.
“The descent of the rollercoaster,” he later commented, “was longer and steeper than I imagined possible.”
How deep became apparent in 2006 when Seve surprised the golfing world by announcing he would play in The Open at Royal Liverpool. He had not competed in the tournament since 2001, when he missed the cut for the sixth time in a row. He had played no tournaments whatsoever in 2004 or 2005 and was fresh off shooting 81, 81 in the French Open. Those who got up early to watch him tee off on Thursday morning hoped for the best but feared the worst.
But, with his teenage son, Javier, on the bag, Seve summoned the defiance, pride and extraordinary scrambling skills that had served him so well in his pomp. His first round was a masterclass in making a score, and while his subsequent 77 ensured he missed the cut in what turned out to be his final Major appearance, there were more than enough flashes of brilliance on the parched Hoylake links to delight his loyal fans. I know because I saw every shot.
The last time I saw Seve was at his home in Pedrena. I was there to talk to representatives of his foundation about staging a fundraising tournament featuring players who had figured in his remarkable story. He was battling brain cancer and a shadow of his former self, and yet he greeted me like an old friend. I am sure he could not have remembered me from the couple of interviews I’d done with him, even if in one I’d cheekily asked whether he’d agree to be godfather to my son if I called him Seve. At the time, I didn’t have a girlfriend, let alone children.
He showed me his trophy room and the par-3 course he’d recently laid out in his garden. He proclaimed that nobody would beat him on the course, even if by this stage he was too weak to play it. I didn’t doubt him. I never had.