Last Wednesday the premiere of Artist, Fighter, Legend, Seve was held at the New Picture House Cinema in St Andrews, while Thursday’s showing there featured the first screening of the James Bond movie No Time To Die. I did not go back on the second night, but you can rest assured that the magic on display in the Seve Ballesteros film would have been on a par with any of Bond’s latest feats. What is more, Ballesteros's derring-do involved nothing in the way of $250 million worth of cinematic shots and stunts. It was all about one swashbuckling golfer and his clubs.
Artist, Fighter, Legend, Seve, which is to be released in the next few days by Rakuten TV, certainly lived up to expectations – and how. People might ask what else could anyone find to say about this golfing phenomenon but there was plenty of material which had never been aired previously.
The Ballesteros family were in St Andrews for the occasion: Seve’s ex-wife, Carmen; their two sons, Javier and Manuel; and their daughter, another Carmen. At a Q&A before the screening, each of the children had something to say about the father they so adored. His daughter wanted to let the audience know she had kept talking to her father for an hour after he had died, believing, as she does, that a person can carry on hearing long after everything else has come to a full-stop.
Javier, the oldest son and an Alps Tour professional who was playing in the Dunhill Links Championship, felt the need to warn everyone that he was not the golfer his father was: “I always tell people that I look like my father, but that sadly for me I don’t play golf like he did.” Manuel, for his part, mentioned how his father had always stressed that talent on its own was never enough.
That all three did as their mother had done earlier in saying how thrilled they were with the way the documentary film had worked out served to make one scene in the film all-the-more poignant.
Bernhard Langer was doing the talking. We had already learned how he and Ballesteros had shared a tearful embrace on the night Langer missed the 6-footer which would have won Europe the so-called “War on the Shore,” alias the 1991 Ryder Cup.
Langer had cared desperately about having cost the Europeans a match which Ballesteros, still a great hero to them all, so wanted to win. However, while he had things in perspective, he seemed acutely aware that Seve did not.
Though that embrace might have suggested the two were good friends already, Langer said that he tried and tried again to get close enough to the player in his later years to be able to discuss where he was going in life itself. This committed Christian wanted to say that it was time for him to put his ex-wife and their children first. He tried twice, maybe even three times, to get the message across but without any success.
Langer was in tears as he admitted to this failure. “Golf remained Seve’s No 1 passion,” he said, sadly.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Lewine Mair