Fifty years ago this year, Royal Birkdale hosted the Open Championship, just as it is about to do this week. Then, as lately, Britain had been blasted by an extraordinarily hot summer. As I subsequently wrote: “The weather that week was of the sort which must have had the Southport Tourist Board thinking that all its summers had come at once. In fact, it was so hot it felt like they had.” I remember a sweltering Hale Irwin leaving the press centre with the words “You guys just aren’t used to handling weather like this.” It seems we are having to get more used to it now.
The weather was so extreme that at one point the golf course caught fire. But the overriding memory of that week, both contemporaneously and with hindsight, was of the metaphorical fireworks produced by an essentially hitherto unknown 19-year-old Spanish golfer. That was the point at which Seve Ballesteros began the journey from sporting anonymity to international icon.
Seve was in the field because he had topped the 1975 Continental Order of Merit. His first task that week, though, was caddying, trying to help his elder brother, Manuel, get through the prequalifying competition at neighbouring Hillside. In this they both failed. And Manuel did not return the favour. In fact Seve was hoping his caddie at the Open would be Dave Musgrove, who had caddied for him at the French Open two months previously, but Musgrove was otherwise committed (although he would be on Seve’s bag when he won the Open for the first time in 1979). Musgrove did have a solution, however. He had a friend, a local policeman called Dick Draper. He hadn’t caddied before but he had a week off work and he was keen to give it a go. Sorted!
Although Manuel was not carting Seve’s clubs around the course, he still had a role to play – not that it was one anyone would have figured needed filling until the championship had got underway. Seve began with a 69 and was tied for the lead. Which meant a media interview. Seve had no knowledge of English but Manuel could manage in a fairly rudimentary way. One amusing consequence of this was that when anyone asked a question in English, Manuel and Seve would have a lengthy conversation in Spanish in order to come up with a response. When it arrived it was invariably something brief, along the lines of “he feels confident”.
Seve may have had no knowledge of the language but during the course of the week he got his first taste of fame. The brothers were photographed when they went out on the town for dinner and pictures of Seve were on both the front and back pages of newspapers. Of course it was novel and, then, it was fun. He led the Open by two shots at halfway and still led Johnny Miller by two with a round to play. Seve could tell Manuel was shocked that this dream might become reality; that his kid brother might actually win the Open.
He didn’t, of course. Not then. But he would soon, three times in all. But even the victory at St Andrews in 1984, with that putt on the 18th, cannot overshadow the impact he made at Birkdale in that long hot summer of ’76.
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com as well as his golf archive on robertgreen-golf.com
Related: Ángel Ayora to Honour Seve Ballesteros at Royal Birkdale With Tribute Looks 50 Years On
Robert Green
Robert Green is a former editor of Golf World and Golf International magazines and the author of four books on golf, including Seve: Golf’s Flawed Genius. He has played golf on more than 450 courses around the world, occasionally acceptably.