The Roc 

The Roc

By Nick Seitz

April 2002

It’s fitting that Rocco Mediate is the poster boy for the National Weather Service lightning campaign. He’s never been hit himself, but he’s often felt like a lightning rod for bolts out of the blue. Maybe it’s Rocco’s ear-tickling name, suggesting a Sopranos wiseguy. (He loves the show.) Maybe it’s his physique: broad hips in roomy slacks distracting from a regimen that has helped him lose about 70 pounds since back surgery in 1994. Maybe it’s the unorthodox putting style — he was the first to win on tour with a long putter, adopted to favor the bad back. Maybe it’s his fresh opinions, as when he reacted to news that Augusta National was lengthening the course by saying, “They’re telling most of us we’re just going to take up a spot in the field and walk around on the nice grass.”

This is not your typical, mass-produced tour pro.

His magnetism owes at least partly to a few of us in the media being extra clever. Previewing the Masters, one magazine reported that “there’s no cooking on the course, so random smells won’t mess with Rocco Mediate’s next triple bogey.” Most of the time Mediate (ME-de-ate) grins and bears such high humor.

There are exceptions. A defective folding chair collapsed under him on the clubhouse porch at the 2000 PGA Championship, which some writers found humorous. “Roc fell off a chair,” he says with his staccato chuckle but without the grin. “It nearly ended my career. My neck, shoulder and back were affected, and it took me four months to feel normal.” A lawsuit against the manufacturers of the chair was settled for an undisclosed sum, as they say on the courthouse steps.

Mediate had won the Buick Open the week before, his fourth victory on tour, and believes the freakish accident probably cost him spots in the Presidents Cup, the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup. He continued to test his body late in 2000, only to be singled out as the leading example of why the so-called Silly Season is dead. Another magazine called him “a bottom feeder” filling in for bigger names who no longer need to bother. “I got barbecued” is all he’ll say.

But it takes a lot to rock the Roc, who finds a fun lining in most challenges. At the Phoenix Open, the tour’s answer to “Animal House,” Mediate has finished first, second and second over a three-year span. “It gets a little crazy, but I love it,” he says. “Only the strong survive.”

In 1999 he was paired with Tiger Woods the last day when an unruly fan in their gallery was caught carrying a gun. Another connoisseur loudly urged Tiger to hole a putt “and Rocco will fold like a cheap suit.” Mediate held up like a thousand-dollar suit and beat Tiger by three. “I want to play where Tiger plays,” he says.

He marvels at Tiger’s composure, while Tiger says of Mediate, “Roc’s become one of my buddies. He has a big heart, and he’s honest and truthful. You have to appreciate that.”

At the infamous par-3 16th hole in Phoenix, Rocco goes out of his way to enjoy himself with fans. “You don’t want to make them mad,” he says. “Duval got upset and said something, and they absolutely killed him. If you don’t like it, don’t play there. They boo me for a bad shot, I figure I deserve it. I was sorry they moved the bleachers farther from that green. They’d chant my name, one side going ‘Roc’ and the other side going ‘co.’ … ‘Roc-co! Roc-co!’ You gotta love it.”

Interviewers relish his freewheeling commentary. The Golf Channel has called Mediate “the best sound bite on tour.” Marino Parascenzo, a Pittsburgh writer who has known Mediate since his amateur days, says, “I’d rather interview Rocco finishing fourth than most players winning.”

I first spend time with Mediate the week of the 2001 Colonial in Fort Worth and quickly find there is much more to him than his lightning-rod image, but he is lightning fast. He talks fast, walks fast, drives fast. We go to the fitness trailer and chat while he rides a recumbent bike that puts less strain on his back. His trainer, Frank Novakoski, tells me later that an athlete’s back is not exactly fine after surgery. “It’s a disability requiring constant maintenance,” he says. “Rocco doesn’t know why his back went bad, but since the surgery he works with machines, free weights, medicine balls, stretching exercises. He understands that the need to work on his whole body never ends.”

A Year at The Masters by Dan Jenkins Golf Digest April 2003  

Cover the Masters as many times as I have — it’s 52 in a row, according to family archives — and one day you look up and realize you’ve spent a year of your life in Augusta, Ga. Which means if you were to place end to end all the dishes of peach cobbler I’ve inhaled in the Augusta National clubhouse through the years, the line would most likely stretch all the way down to Amen Corner and back up to Magnolia Lane.

To say nothing of the plates of country ham and red-eye gravy and biscuits I’ve lapped up with the eggs over-easy each morning at a table upstairs in the grill where you can look out on the veranda and see how the wisteria vines on the big tree are coming along this year.

This isn’t just about food, it’s about memories. First, I must say I’m always amazed at how big the place looks. It’s the Rose Bowl of golf courses. Each spring the bigness of it somehow stuns you because it visibly dwarfs every course you’ve ever known. Huge fairways, mammoth greens, monster bunkers, towering trees, enormous hills, steep valleys. And of course each year you tend to inspect the set decoration, the dogwood and azaleas, to see if they’ve survived the winter in good health. Funny how a foolish pride of ownership somehow exists for the longtime Masters goer.

Early on — for me, at least — it was all about Ben Hogan. Going every 18 with him, chain-smoking with him, hanging loose, waiting to swoop up an exclusive quote for the paper. Often he’d speak of how to play the course. Some of it seems so out of date now.

“Never go for 13 or 15 if you’re leading,” Hogan once said. “Too much to lose, too little to gain.”

You may have heard these words of his quoted a thousand times on TV by now: “If you ever see me close to the pin on No. 11, you’ll know I’ve missed the shot.”

He said it first to a small group of us in the locker room in ‘54. This was after he thought he’d lost that Masters by stupidly pulling his approach into the pond at the 11th and suffering a double-bogey 6.

I still remember the ‘54 Masters better than I remember last year’s. After Ben’s sickening double, I raced over to catch up with the probable winner, Billy Joe Patton, the curious amateur, who now led by two. The fairways were yet to be roped off so severely, so I was standing quite close to Billy Joe before he hit his second shot out of the right rough at 13.

Some fans were yelling at him to go for it, others were cautioning him to play smart, lay up. I can still hear him drawling, “I didn’t get where I am by playin’ safe!” Whereupon he wildly hit a wood shot into the creek and took a 7.

Moments later, he made a watery 6 at 15. Thus, he went three over on the two birdie holes and missed the Hogan-Sam Snead playoff by one stroke. He might easily have won, but he rashly deprived us scribes of writing about the first amateur to win a major since Johnny Goodman in ‘33.

Equally vivid is the night before the final round in ‘59. Place: lobby of the massive Bon Air Hotel, which was once headquarters to the stars. Bob Drum and I were milling around, cocktailing. For about 40 years Drum was my partner in various journalistic and social adventures. Anyhow, we happened upon Art Wall, the eventual winner, and were chatting with him when he was suddenly besieged by a wobbly, overserved Southern bubba-gent in a screaming blazer.

“Ain’t you Art Wall?” the guy said.

Art nodded politely.

“Ain’t you the old boy who claims he’s made all them hole-in-ones?” the guy said.

Art softly said, “Yes, I am. It’s up to 34 now.”

“Thirty-four!” the guy blurted out. “Son, who you tryin’ to kid? Bobby didn’t make but three!”

When we stopped laughing, Drum and I exchanged a look that said for each of us, “I don’t care who wins tomorrow, I’ve got my story.”

One of the most memorable messages ever posted on an Augusta National leader board came in ‘62, down by the 12th hole in the midst of the Arnold Palmer-Gary Player-Dow Finsterwald playoff. Only seconds after Palmer hit that great 7-iron stiff for the birdie 2 that more or less locked up a third Masters for him, these large, red letters appeared on the leader board that said, impartially, of course: GO ARNIE.

Two years later Arnold won his fourth Masters, but Augusta in ‘64 is best remembered by me as, well, The Year of the Immortal Quip. It came courtesy of my pal Dave Marr, prince of quipsters. Alas, Dave has joined Bob Drum in the Skipper’s hospitality suite and surely grins down at me now as I speak. But in ‘64 he tied Jack Nicklaus for runner-up, though they finished a whopping six strokes behind the winner.

Dave was paired with Palmer in the last round, and as they stood on the 72nd tee, Arnold, jovially leading by six, teed up his ball, waggled his driver, then glanced over at Marr and said, “Anything I can do to help you here, Dave?”

To which Marr said, “Yeah, make a 12.”

Then there’s the slide show of Nicklaus, which lasted about, what, 24 years? From the beefy crewcut Nicklaus to the dapper goldenlocks in ‘86 doing that remarkable thing. Jack hitting all those historical shots in the clutch through the years, sinking all those theatrical putts in the clutch and being the most cooperative winner imaginable but maybe, more important, being the most gracious loser ever.

Of his countless remarks over the years, one of them has never left the old memory vault. Charles Coody won the ‘71 Masters, but it could be said Nicklaus helped him out in the last round. Jack didn’t birdie 13 or 15 Sunday, and yet he finished only two strokes behind Coody, tied for second.

After his round, when I asked Jack if he had some explanation for how sloppily he’d played 13 and 15, he only shrugged and said, as if I should have known it,

“I never play well on the par 5s here.”

Guess it was true. Guess it continued to be true. He only won the thing six times.

So many moments, so little space.

Ben Crenshaw’s emotional victory in ‘95 stands out, Ben crediting the late Harvey Penick for his second Masters, weepily saying, “I had a 15th club in the bag.”

One year later came Greg Norman to lose it for the third, fourth or 15th time. On the occasion of his calamitous 78 against winner Nick Faldo’s closing 67, Nick gave Norman a tough-luck, sorry-pal, sportsmanlike hug on the final green — or was he performing a Heimlich maneuver?

All the rest is a mosaic of Tiger Woods. He has this catchy name — always important — to go with his monumental talent. It was fortunate his daddy gave him that name early.

Eldrick Woods couldn’t have beaten Yung-Yo Hsieh.

 

Punk Kid Shows No Respect to US Open

This column by the late Jim Murray was first published on June 18, 1973:

OAKMONT, Pa. – The 1973 U.S. Open was won Sunday by a tall blond kid who shot 63. I think it was Johnny Miller. On the other hand, maybe it was Larry Hinson or Fred Marti or Jack Montgomery or Tom Shaw or Bert Greene or Jim Simons. I swear I can’t tell one of these kids from another. The only thing I’m real sure of is, it wasn’t Chi Chi Rodriguez.

These kids all look alike, swing alike. They all got long legs, long blond hair and look like they were found hanging around the college malt shop. None of ‘em look old enough to vote. They weren’t born, they were Xeroxed.

They’re always going out and shooting 63.

You’re not supposed to shoot 63 in a U.S. Open, but Johnny Miller – if that’s who it was – is too young to know that.

These kids are too young to know U.S. Opens are supposed to be won by Jack Nicklaus. They can’t tell the difference between the U.S. Open and the Memphis Open. They don’t know there is such a thing as a triple bogey yet.

You know how you are at 26. All your parts are in working order. You never get a bellyache or a self doubt. You can’t for the life of you understand why those old gaffers are putting side-saddle or why you stick a bottle of Rolaids in your bag or put your feet in a bucket of hot water at night.

They’re always combing their hair. Their slacks fit without a belt. Their bellies are flat. They got all 32 teeth. They can tell the sex of a gnat two fairways away. They have 360-degree swings without hurting their backs. Their tee shots are 300 yards, all carry.

I hate ‘em.

Imagine shooting a 63 in a U.S. Open! That’s almost like stoning a church, painting mustaches on statues of saints. You’re supposed to win an Open with four 71s or three 69s and a 72. Your swing is supposed to choke up as you get near first money. You’re supposed to look up at the leaderboard and say, “My God! What am I doing leading a U.S. Open? Where do I come off beating Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino and Gary Player?!” Then you’re supposed to go out and faint or shank and shoot bogey-bogey-bogey-double bogey.

You’re supposed to be 35 years old and have been playing golf since you were 10 and won the National Amateur and 50 other tournaments to win the Open.

No one has ever shot 63 in an Open before. No one would have dared. Only one of these kooky kids with all that long hair would have had the nerve. They got no respect for their elders. “Flippy-wristed college kids,” Tommy Bolt called them. They could one-putt Rhode Island. The Open to them just means that they don’t have to go out and qualify for a year. Nobody who had any great respect for its tradition would go out and shoot a 63. It’s embarrassing. What do they think this is, Tucson? The Foxfire Satellite?

I’m pretty sure it was Miller, but do you know who shot a 65 the last day? A kid named Lanny Wadkins, a college dropout. He looks like he eats in a high chair. He ain’t even shaved yet and he’s steering it around with two eagles on the front nine and three birdies on the back.

They ought to take these kids out behind the woodshed and poke some manners in them. I wouldn’t mind if Johnny One-Putt had shot four 71s and then beat Bob Charles or somebody in a playoff, but if these baby-faced Johnny Colleges or Lanny Wake Forests are going to go around shooting 63s and 65s in the last round of the Open, they may have to have an age limit in these things.

Arnold Palmer, who didn’t win this thing for the 13th straight year, looked over at the leaderboard on the 12th tee and, in rich Elizabethan English, said “I almost threw up! I couldn’t believe anyone was shooting a 63 in the Open.” He promptly went bogey-bogey-bogey. That’s what these kids do to an Open.

The reason I think it was Johnny Miller is because seven years ago, at Olympic, he showed up to caddie in the Open. Just for the hell of it, he went and qualified. All he did was finish eighth. He was 19 at the time, barely out of high school.

He figured if it was that easy, he might as well turn pro and, as soon as he had graduated from Brigham Young, he did.

He scattered the flower of American golf in his nine-birdie round.

But the damage he did to the field is nothing compared to the damage he did to the Open. It’s like a Navy that’s been scuttled, an Army that has handed over its sword. Proud Oakmont will have to have its picture turned to the wall. They have had five Opens here and 67 was the best anybody could do.

But, of course, these Johnny Blondhairs don’t know that. “I don’t know much about Open history,” this blond kid, whichever one it is, said in the press interview. In other words, they make history, they don’t read it.

Doesn’t seem fair. Kind of reminds me of the guy who picks a fight in a bar with the heavyweight champion and knocks him out, then, outside, he almost faints when told who it was.

“If I’d of known that, I’d never have been able to do it!”

Well, I guess the old traditions are crumbling all over. Nobody wears black tie to dinner or socks with his shoes. You don’t need a tie in a good restaurant anymore and the kids call the college president by his first name and burn flags and everything.

But, now, one of them’s gone and shot 63 to win the Open and if I knew for sure whether it was Miller or Hinson or Ben Crenshaw, just which one of those impudent youngsters it was, I

would strongly recommend that he not be admitted to a future Open unless he can conclusively prove his hands tremble on the backswing of a 20-foot putt and that he definitely does not consider anything under 18 feet a tap-in. And, if he should ever shoot a 63 again, his score be thrown out on the grounds he didn’t realize what he was up against.

At the very least, he should be made to look at home movies of past Opens showing Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer working till their palms sweat trying to break 80 every round.

All I ask is he know that’s a real lion’s mouth he’s putting his head into and not two guys in a costume who are in on the gag.

 

 

 

The first few imprints appeared last year — a tie with Jack Nicklaus for second place behind Johnny Miller in the British Open, a team victory with Mahuel Pinero for Spain in the World Cup. And he won’t be 20 years old until April 9, the third-round Saturday of the Masters where he plans to celebrate his birthday on his first trip to the Augusta classic.

Although a virtual unknown outside Europe, he joined Barner’s stable. He tried for a PGA tow card at the 1975 fall qualifying school but missed by four shots.

On the way to the Japanese tour and the World Cup in Bangkok that year, he stopped in California where, as part of his golf education, he played some of America’s best courses — Riviera and Bel-Air in the Los Angeles area, Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill and Cypress Point on the Monterey Peninsula. He also signed contracts to endorse golf equipment and golf clothing.

He emerged last year as Europe’s most respected golfer with $62,021 in prize money. He topped both the European Order of Merit and the British Order of Merit, won the Dutch Open, the Lancome Trophy in France and the Don Swaelens Memorial Challenge tournament in Belgium, and he finished third in the Swiss Open, the Scandinavian Open and the West German Open. Three other Spanish golfers also won big European tournaments — Manuel Pinero won the Swiss Open, Francisco Abreu won the Madrid Open and Salvador Balbuena won the Portuguese Open — but Ballesteros is the Spanish golfer who, because of the British Open, projected himself the most.

He had intended to try again to qualify for the PGA tour in last year’s school at Brownsville, Tex., but he competed instead in the World Cup at Palm Springs.

That was after spending a week in Los Angeles being tutored in English-another of Barner’s prep courses. Seve speaks English in a charming Spanish accent.

“But please, slow,” the 5′-11″, 150-pound Spaniard asked American newsmen in the World Cup press tent. “You speak too fast for me to understand.”

He understood the Mission Hills course. He shot 289, one over par, while his Spanish teammate, Manuel Pinero, shot 285, three under par. Their winning total of 574 edged the United States team of Dave Stockton and Jerry Pate by two shots.

“I play in the World Cup,” he explained, “because if I play in the PGA school, in Spain the people don’t like it.”

Early this year Seve entered the Spanish air force to begin fulfilling an 18-month military obligation that will limit his tournament appear¬ances for a while. He’ll be on leave to play in the Masters and he hopes to get time off in the fall for the PGA qualifying school to try again for a U.S. tour card.

“American tour more difficult,” he says, “but more money. Otherwise no difference. Birdie the same, par the same, bogey the same. Out-of-bounds the same.”

Seve grew up on his father’s small dairy farm near Santander on Spain’s northern coast. The Real Pedrena course was a wedge shot away from their farmhouse. “Not many people play golf in Spain,” he says. “Bullfighting, tennis, soccer still big but golf is coming up.”

The success of his uncle, Ramon Sota, had inspired his older brothers to caddie at Real Perdena, a par-70 of 6,160 yards. Seve followed. When he was 13, he shot a 65, a course record for caddies. When he was 15, he beat his brother Manuel, then a 23-year-old pro. At about that time he accompanied Manuel to a Barcelona tournament. Manuel, now the Real Pedrena pro, was the first-round leader, but soared into the 80s in the second round. He got no sympathy from his younger brother.

“I,” the kid snapped, “could have done better myself.”

And he soon did. He competed in the Portuguese Open at 16 and in his first British Open at 18, at Carnoustie in 1975.

“I shot 79-80,” he recalls with a laugh. “That’s one under par.”

When he discusses the mechanics of his swing, he doesn’t laugh. “It is my swing,” he contends. “Maybe it is similar to Manuel’s but I don’t copy.” When Seve finds himself in a slump, he doesn’t consult anyone else.

“Just me,” he says. “Not even Manuel, just me all the time.”

As he matures, Severiano Ballesteros will learn to trust someone else’s advice. And as he matures, he will loom as a golfer that all the world will know. When he suddenly arrived at the British Open last year, not even Jack Nicklaus knew much about him.

“I’ve never seen him play,” Nicklaus said.

Jack will see him and so will millions of others. They’ll even learn to pronounce his name.

 

The Roc

By Nick Seitz

April 2002

It’s fitting that Rocco Mediate is the poster boy for the National Weather Service lightning campaign. He’s never been hit himself, but he’s often felt like a lightning rod for bolts out of the blue. Maybe it’s Rocco’s ear-tickling name, suggesting a Sopranos wiseguy. (He loves the show.) Maybe it’s his physique: broad hips in roomy slacks distracting from a regimen that has helped him lose about 70 pounds since back surgery in 1994. Maybe it’s the unorthodox putting style — he was the first to win on tour with a long putter, adopted to favor the bad back. Maybe it’s his fresh opinions, as when he reacted to news that Augusta National was lengthening the course by saying, “They’re telling most of us we’re just going to take up a spot in the field and walk around on the nice grass.”

This is not your typical, mass-produced tour pro.

His magnetism owes at least partly to a few of us in the media being extra clever. Previewing the Masters, one magazine reported that “there’s no cooking on the course, so random smells won’t mess with Rocco Mediate’s next triple bogey.” Most of the time Mediate (ME-de-ate) grins and bears such high humor.

There are exceptions. A defective folding chair collapsed under him on the clubhouse porch at the 2000 PGA Championship, which some writers found humorous. “Roc fell off a chair,” he says with his staccato chuckle but without the grin. “It nearly ended my career. My neck, shoulder and back were affected, and it took me four months to feel normal.” A lawsuit against the manufacturers of the chair was settled for an undisclosed sum, as they say on the courthouse steps.

Mediate had won the Buick Open the week before, his fourth victory on tour, and believes the freakish accident probably cost him spots in the Presidents Cup, the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup. He continued to test his body late in 2000, only to be singled out as the leading example of why the so-called Silly Season is dead. Another magazine called him “a bottom feeder” filling in for bigger names who no longer need to bother. “I got barbecued” is all he’ll say.

But it takes a lot to rock the Roc, who finds a fun lining in most challenges. At the Phoenix Open, the tour’s answer to “Animal House,” Mediate has finished first, second and second over a three-year span. “It gets a little crazy, but I love it,” he says. “Only the strong survive.”

In 1999 he was paired with Tiger Woods the last day when an unruly fan in their gallery was caught carrying a gun. Another connoisseur loudly urged Tiger to hole a putt “and Rocco will fold like a cheap suit.” Mediate held up like a thousand-dollar suit and beat Tiger by three. “I want to play where Tiger plays,” he says.

He marvels at Tiger’s composure, while Tiger says of Mediate, “Roc’s become one of my buddies. He has a big heart, and he’s honest and truthful. You have to appreciate that.”

At the infamous par-3 16th hole in Phoenix, Rocco goes out of his way to enjoy himself with fans. “You don’t want to make them mad,” he says. “Duval got upset and said something, and they absolutely killed him. If you don’t like it, don’t play there. They boo me for a bad shot, I figure I deserve it. I was sorry they moved the bleachers farther from that green. They’d chant my name, one side going ‘Roc’ and the other side going ‘co.’ … ‘Roc-co! Roc-co!’ You gotta love it.”

Interviewers relish his freewheeling commentary. The Golf Channel has called Mediate “the best sound bite on tour.” Marino Parascenzo, a Pittsburgh writer who has known Mediate since his amateur days, says, “I’d rather interview Rocco finishing fourth than most players winning.”

I first spend time with Mediate the week of the 2001 Colonial in Fort Worth and quickly find there is much more to him than his lightning-rod image, but he is lightning fast. He talks fast, walks fast, drives fast. We go to the fitness trailer and chat while he rides a recumbent bike that puts less strain on his back. His trainer, Frank Novakoski, tells me later that an athlete’s back is not exactly fine after surgery. “It’s a disability requiring constant maintenance,” he says. “Rocco doesn’t know why his back went bad, but since the surgery he works with machines, free weights, medicine balls, stretching exercises. He understands that the need to work on his whole body never ends.”

 

A Year at The Masters by Dan Jenkins Golf Digest April 2003

“That’s the tournament I want to win more than any other,” he says. “It is more famous than any other.”

Only one foreign golfer has won the Masters — Gary Player in 1961 and 1974. Perhaps significantly, Ballesteros has been called “the next Gary Player,” meaning the next commanding foreign golfer on the Uhited States tour, by Fred Corcoran, the World Cup executive director who has seen them all, going back to the Scottish shepherds.

Ballesteros demonstrates his powerful swing on this iron shot, keeping his left hand and arm firm and staying nicely behind the ball with his upper body through impact.

The kid can play. But that’s not surprising. Playing golf is part of his heritage. His uncle, Ramon Sota, is Spain’s most successful golfer. His three older brothers are pros. Equally important, the kid can project. He’s as tall, dark and handsome as Don Juan, with a smile as broad and dazzling as the Costa del Sol. He has a chance to be the most appealing golfer since Arnold Palmer stopped charging. He is capable of spectacular streaks, not only as Palmer once was, but also at Palmer’s expense. Just when Palmer thought he had won the Lancome Trophy tournament in France last fall, the kid exploded for five birdies on the back nine, and won by a stroke.

“I think my sand wedge is very good,” Seve says, “but sometimes my putter’s good. For nine holes at the Belgian Open, every hole one putt.”

Teen-agers putt like that occasionally. They also act their age — to the gallery’s delight. At the British Open last year, Ballesteros rifled a shot out of high grass over a sand dune and onto the green. When the gallery roared, he raised his arms, shrugged and smiled. Instant love. Another time at Royal Birkdale he impaled Pat Ward-Thomas with a pointed index finger when the archbishop of British golf writers inadvertently moved as the Spaniard was about to putt. “No move,” the kid scolded, “when anybody putting.”

He defends his driving accuracy against those who remember his wristy tee shots into Royal Birkdale’s thickets.

“They say I hit the ball left and right but I don’t think so. When I go into bunker everybody go click-click,” he says, pretending to focus a camera. “But when I’m in middle of the fairway nobody sees the ball”

Johnny Miller saw Seve’s ball at the British Open — on and off the fairway. Paired together, he saw Ballesteros shoot a 73 for a two-stroke lead entering the final round.

“He can win it,” Miller predicted. “I’m telling you, he takes a cut at the ball, he just rips it. He reminds me of myself when I’m playing well. But today, I let his scrambling act get to me and my own game went out of control. He’s a good kid, though. He wears Johnny Miller slacks.”

In the final round Miller shot 66 and won by six shots. Ballesteros had 74 with a birdie-birdie-par-par-eagle-birdie finish after Miller soothed him through a round that might have been 80.

“I know Seve is disappointed,” Miller said at the time. “But from my own experience I know this will be good for his career. I know because coming in second at the Masters in 1971 was the best thing that ever happened to me. If he had won the British Open at 19 there would have been all sorts of pressures and demands that he couldn’t meet. The best thing for his career was to finish strong. This will be a plus for him, not a minus.”

Miller’s relationship with Ballesteros has a business link. They have the same manager, Ed Barner of Uni-Managers International, a Los Angeles-based firm.

At the 1975 Double Diamond tournament in Scotland, another Barner client, Roberto de Vicenzo, had been paired with Ballesteros in the team event. Later the phone rang in Barner’s hotel room there. “I’m going to do you a favor,” de Vicenzo said. “I got a kid who’s fantastic. Come down and meet him.”

Barner was impressed by de Vicenzo’s recommendation. At the Lancome Trophy tournament in France the following week, Barner asked another client, Billy Casper, to scout Ballesteros.

“The kid has one of the finast short games I’ve ever seen,” Casper reported. “And he’s an animal off the tee.”

 Ballesteros justified Casper’s assessment of his tee shots. In a group that included Palmer, Player and Casper, he won the Lancome long driving contest.