Licence To Thrill

Bill Elliott looks back on Seve’s life and ponders the void left by his untimely death 10 years ago

- Bill Elliott

Ten years? Is it really a decade since Severiano Ballesteros Sota was finally overwhelmed by the brain cancer that brought such a rich life to so premature an end? He was 54 years and 29 days old when he died.

Of course, we had already lost him as a competitive golfer, his retirement from the old game also premature because of his neverending back problems, his announcement in the media center during The Open week at Carnoustie offering a sad preview to the 2007 Championship.

He told me on that afternoon in Scotland that while he obviously regretted leaving the jousting fields, he looked forward to continued involvement in golf, to designing courses, to promoting the game, to leadership and inspiration and motivation as well as, occasionally, to being a bit of a rascal, of the loveable kind, while enthusiastically remaining a maverick.

Instead, he was diagnosed with brain tumours. It was a seriously cruel irony that one of the most creative minds ever to embrace golf turned out to be the cradle for what destroyed him. Not that Seve railed against this too much, consoling those of us who cared deeply for him by repeatedly stressing that he had enjoyed “a wonderful life and a journey he would not change”. He didn’t want us to feel sorry for him, but we did. We also felt sorry for ourselves.

So much to offer