Of very few men could it be said that they changed the face of a sport.
In golf, none left their mark quite like Severiano Ballesteros.
The suave, dashing swashbuckler from Pedrena, a small fishing village on Spain's windswept northern coast, was "special," as his brothers warned us before he exploded onto the scene, still a teen, with a second-place finish at the 1976 British Open.
"He was the greatest show on earth," said his contemporary, Nick Faldo.
And in that, Faldo has never been more right, because although other champions may have won more often, when Seve was Seve, and at the top of his game, there was no taking your eyes off him.
"On a golf course he had everything," Lee Trevino once said, "I mean everything; touch, power, know-how, courage and charisma."
Tom Kite said that when he hit his straps, "it's almost as if Seve is driving a Ferrari and the rest of us are in Chevrolets."
He was a star and the course was his stage; often every square inch of it.
His playing style was wild and unpredictable. And never, ever safe.
It was the fact that he revelled in walking on the wild side that endeared him to so many.
"You always knew you were going to be entertained," said Jack Nicklaus of Ballesteros.
Who else would hit a driver on the 16th at Royal Lytham and St. Annes, as Seve did in 1979 with the British Open all but won?
And then, when the ball was hit so crookedly that it finally came to rest in a temporary parking lot, who else would have the presence of mind to have a car in his way removed — secure a free drop — then calmly strike an iron to 15 feet to set up the birdie that would seal the Claret Jug?
Through all the drama that routinely enveloped him on the course, Ballesteros never flinched, never surrendered and, relying on his imagination, wits, the softest of hands — and, in no small measure — guts, would often find a way to save his bacon.
"His creativity and inventiveness on the golf course may never be surpassed," said Tiger Woods, who knows a thing or 14 — as in majors — about saving par from the trees.
Indeed, Seve's penchant for Houdini escape acts became so famous that a term was coined to honor them. The "Seve par" is known throughout the world's golfing fraternity as an answered prayer, a small "m" miracle.
Ballesteros routinely pulled off audacious shots others wouldn't even dream of attempting, and while the bravado that fuels such aggression was very much in his nature, some of it's explained, too, by the fact that he came from a country not steeped in golf tradition, so he wasn't bound by conventions and dogma.
He wasn't restricted to the "right" way of doing things.
He'd learned to play as a boy on the sand with a rusted 3-iron.
He had, in essence, invented his own way to play, guided by an artist's eye and an indefatigable determination to succeed.
"The aspect of his personality that shone through more than anything for me was his self-belief," said his European Ryder Cup teammate, Sam Torrance. "Seve was convinced he could do anything if he set his mind to it."
It wasn't coincidental that when Seve's self-taught game began to desert him in his mid-30s and, in desperation, he reached out to noted golf instructors for conventional teaching, that his deterioration only worsened.
The truth is that he could only do it his way or he couldn't do it at all.
It was, in the end, sad to watch him struggle to break 80, but while the magic was long gone, what never left him was the fire that burned in those smoldering Latin eyes.
A Hall of Famer, he will rightfully be remembered for his 91 career victories and five majors — three times a British Open champion, he was also twice winner of the green jacket, and in 1980 became the first European to win the Masters — as well as his 61 weeks as world No. 1.
But the Spaniard's greatest legacy will be the way he transformed a sport with few roots on his continent.
He breathed new life into the struggling European Tour and five times as a player and captain won the Ryder Cup, which until European players were admitted in 1979 had been a rather sleepy, genteel set of exhibition matches in which the United States routinely crushed the British and Irish.
No European loved or embraced the Ryder Cup more than Ballesteros, who treated the matches with the patriotic gravitas of a World Cup final.
Indeed, the introduction of soccer chants, such as "Ole! Ole! Ole!" to the Ryder Cup owes much to Seve. What does his unforgettable celebration after holing the winning putt at St. Andrews in the 1984 British Open — one of the truly iconic images in golf, along with Hogan's 1-iron at Merion and Jack's putter raised at the 1986 Masters — remind you of if not a man who's just scored a goal?
As much as he loved his country and his continent, Ballesteros took particular joy in defeating the United States.
"Seve loved to beat the Americans," said Torrance, "Probably because he perceived a lack of respect towards him, dating back to one of his first visits to the United States when an interviewer referred to him as Steve instead of Seve."
Interestingly, Torrance doesn't list as his favorite Seve Ryder Cup moment the 3-wood out of a fairway bunker to secure a half-point in the 1983 singles — maybe the greatest shot in the competition's history — or the winning putt Ballesteros holed in 1987, the first time the Europeans had won on American soil.
"The performance I will treasure most was his final appearance at Oak Hill in 1995," said Europe's 2002 winning captain. "By that stage his game had gone and we all knew it. But his heart was still strong. He went out first in the singles against Tom Lehman and could not hit a fairway.
"But, somehow, he stayed in the match by recovering from the most unlikely places to push his opponent to the limit. It was a hopeless cause and in the end he lost, but his bloody-minded determination not to give in was an inspiration."
And that, in golf as in life, was Seve: never surrendering, fighting the good fight, till the last breath.
