Seve: Golf's Flawed Genius

by Robert Green

A golfing legend with five major championships to his credit, Severiano Ballesteros was one of the game's great heroes – charismatic, charming, fiery, unpredictable. His untimely death in May 2011, after a prolonged struggle with cancer, left his sport bereft.

Over the course of Seve's career, no other golf writer enjoyed such regular contact with him as Robert Green – meetings, interviews, conversations and meals together, all of which led to a video and a golf instruction book. This book draws on the material and insights gathered during those collaborative years to capture the 'real Seve'. It describes his family and upbringing in Spain and recalls his great on-course triumphs – not least his enormous role in the revival of the fortunes of the Ryder Cup, which thanks to him is today one of the world's great sporting events – as well as his calamities. Dramatically and insightfully, Green recalls the great wins in the Open and the Masters, and also those titles that excruciatingly slipped from Seve's grasp.

The book also examines Seve's darker side: his controversial and very public spats with officialdom and his sometimes tempestuous private life, including his divorce from Carmen, the daughter of one of Spain's wealthiest men and mother of his three children, to whom he was married for 17 years. And even after his death, his legacy could not rest.

Above all, though, it is Seve the golfer who takes centre stage, resulting in a portrait that does full justice to its colourful and mercurial subject. It is a story which will enthral all those who watched and admired this golfing icon throughout his remarkable career.

'I look into their eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I'm thinking, "I'm going to bury you."' Seve Ballesteros

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

365 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 28, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Robert Green, full name is Robert Kimball Green, holds graduate degrees from New York University and Harvard.

Reviews

[AJW · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this biography hard going, it moved around Seve’s life like one of his golf balls - i.e. all over the place, and definitely not in a straight line.

I think the author was trying to tackle Seve’s life thematically, but it left me confused. And some things got repeated in different chapters. I would have preferred a chronological account.

The best thing about this biography is that author knew Seve well and his contemporaries. I felt that I got an insight into who Seve was really like, warts and all.

[Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad but a little too much emphasis on Seve's mercurial personality and too little on Seve the golfer ..at least for me.