Severiano Ballesteros

Ballesteros was born in Pedreña, Spain. 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.

Ballesteros turned professional in March 1974 at the age of 16. 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). In 1988, he led the Official World Golf Rankings at the end of the year; these rankings were not inaugurated until April 1986, but Ballesteros also led McCormack's World Golf Rankings, published in McCormack's "World Of Professional Golf" annuals (from which the official rankings were developed) from 1983 to 1985.

Ballesteros went on to win five major championships:

• The Masters: 1980, 1983
  • His 1980 win was the first at Augusta by a European player.
  • With his 1980 win at age 23, he was its youngest ever winner, though this record was broken by Tiger Woods in 1997.
• The Open Championship: 1979, 1984, 1988
  • His 1979 win made him the first golfer from continental Europe to win a major since Frenchman Arnaud Massy won The Open in 1907.
  • With his 1979 win at age 22, he was the youngest winner of the Open Championship in the 20th century

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 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 had played sparingly since the late 1990s due to back problems, and made his first start in years at the 2005 Madrid Open. He stated a desire to play more tournaments in the 2006 season. He entered the 2006 Open Championship, having played just one other event on the European Tour, The Open de France Alstom, where he missed the cut. He runs a thriving golf course design business, is divorced with three children and has been eligible for the Champions Tour and European Seniors Tour upon turning 50 in 2007.

Ballesteros was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1997.

He was announced again as non-playing captain of the 2007 European team to defend the Royal Trophy against the Asian team at the Amata Spring Country Club in Bangkok.

After further recurrence of his back problems, which contributed to his finishing tied for last in his only Champions Tour start, Ballesteros announced his retirement from golf on 16 July 2007, ringing down the curtain on an illustrious career. During the news conference, he also addressed reports in European media that he had attempted suicide, saying that those reports "were not even close to reality". He had been briefly hospitalized when he became concerned about the condition of his heart, but was released the same day after being given a clean bill of health