Severiano "Seve" Ballesteros (born 9 April 1957 in Pedreña , Spain) is a Spanish golfer who was one of the sport's leading figures in the 1980s and 1990s.

He learned the game while playing on the beaches near his home, mainly using a 3-iron given to him by one of his older brothers. All three of his older brothers were golf professionals, as was an uncle.

In 1976, he burst onto the international scene with a second-place finish in The Open Championship; he went on to win the European Tour Order of Merit (money title) that year, and repeated his Order of Merit win the following two years. He would go on to win the Order of Merit six times, a record at that time (since surpassed by Colin Montgomerie).

Ballesteros went on to win five major championships:

• The Masters: 1980, 1983
  • His 1980 win was the first at Augusta by a European player.
• The Open Championship: 1979, 1984, 1988

He was also a great at match play; he won the World Match Play Championship five times, and was a mainstay of the European Ryder Cup team for much of the 1980s and 1990s. He scored 20 points out of 37 matches against the United States; his partnership with fellow Spaniard José María Olazábal was one of the most successful in the history of the competition, with 11 wins and two halved matches out of 15 pairs matches. While Ballesteros was a member of European sides that won the Ryder Cup in 1985, retained the Cup in 1987 and 1989, and regained the Cup in 1995, the pinnacle of his career in the competition came in 1997, when he captained the winning European side at Valderrama Golf Club in Sotogrande , Spain. This was the first Ryder Cup ever held in continental Europe.

In 2000, he created The Seve Trophy, a team competition similar to the Ryder Cup pitting a team from Great Britain and Ireland against one from continental Europe.

Ballesteros continues to play on the European Tour, and has a thriving golf course design business. He is married with three children.

External links

• Official home page
• Seve Ballesteros at About.com
• Seve Ballesteros at Golf Stars Online Directory of interviews, websites and feature articles with or about him