By themselves his career statistics mark him out as special: 50 European Tour wins, five World Match Play titles, eight Ryder Cup appearances and, of course, five major championship victories. But mere numbers have never been enough to convey fully the impact Seve Ballesteros had on golf.

A hero to at least two generations, he has been, no question, the most historically significant and charismatic European player of the past 60 years. As Ken Schofield, the former executive director of a European Tour built largely on the transcending appeal of the dashing Spaniard, has said many times: "Seve was Europe's Arnold Palmer."

There were so many memories, so many thrilling moments to savour in the career of the kid from the fishing village of Pedreña on Spain's northern coast, the kid who played not with the plodding artisanship of a Nick Faldo or a Colin Montgomerie but with the dashing aplomb of the supreme artist.

Big praise
Ballesteros is, for example, the man who hit the shot Jack Nicklaus calls "the greatest I ever saw", a beautifully sliced three-wood from under the face of a fairway bunker on the 18th at PGA National in Florida during the 1983 Ryder Cup match.

"I wish there was a tape of all the shots he has hit," says José María Olazábal, with whom Ballesteros formed the greatest partnership in Ryder Cup history. "Then we would really know how special he was. No one has made a bigger contribution to the European Tour. He was the one who broke down all the barriers, all the walls. He made the rest of the players of his time believe that they could play everywhere in the world. I don't think anyone comes close to him in this part of the world."

Seve, indeed, showed the way for Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Bernhard Langer - the rest of what became known as Europe's Big Five. "He was a bigger star than the other four put together," says the former Tour player Mike Clayton. First of them to win on the European Tour, first to win in the US and first to win a major championship, Ballesteros was the trailblazer as he and a generation of continental compatriots dominated the game through the 80s and early 90s.

"Seve was really the leader; the others followed in his wake," says the former Ryder Cup player Ken Brown. "Because of the way he played and how successful he was, the others could see that they could do it too. It was like, 'If Seve can win major championships, so can I'."

Special moments
No one did it like Seve, though. All five of his grand slam victories were marked by special moments, even now vivid in the memory. There was the so-called "car-park shot" on Lytham's 16th en route to his first Open win in 1979. Less than a year later he led by as many as 10 with nine holes to play in the 1980 Masters. As he says: "I was Tiger before Tiger was Tiger."

In 1983 Ballesteros chipped in at the last hole to win his second green jacket. Then at St Andrews he clinched the 1984 Open championship with a 10-foot putt on the last green. No one who was there or watched on TV will ever forget the prolonged fist-punching with which he celebrated. And finally, back at Lytham in 1988, he broke the brave Nick Price's heart with a wondrous chip from beside the 72nd green.

Decline
Amid such majesty, there have been less lustrous moments. Ballesteros missed the 1981 Ryder Cup at Walton Heath because he fell out with the European Tour over appearance money. And, most famously, there was that duffed four-iron into the pond in front of the 15th at Augusta National. Surely the worst shot ever struck by a world-class player under pressure, it cost him the 1986 Masters.

All of which was but a mere prelude to a sad and precipitous decline. Between 1976 and 1992 he was a permanent fixture in the top 20 of the European Order of Merit. After 1996 he was never inside the top 100. "I miss the feeling of being in contention," he said in Dubai a few years ago. "And I still know how to play. I just can't hit the ball."

The Guardian