Seve won't be at Augusta, but memories fill the void

Seve won't be at Augusta, but memories fill the void

As has sadly been the case since 2007, when he made the last of 28 Masters appearances, the stricken Seve Ballesteros will be absent this week when golf makes its annual pilgrimage to Augusta, Ga. Absent but not forgotten, that is business golf balls. How could he be? Anyone lucky enough to have seen the most charismatic, exciting and historically significant European player of the last half-century is sure to recall the dashing Spaniard -- who was struck by a brain tumor in 2008 and will turn 54 on the Saturday of the tournament -- as he swashbuckled his way to five major championship victories and a record 50 European Tour wins amid a worldwide total of 87. The included two Masters victories, in 1980 and 1983. The standard bearer for a generation of European stars who brought an end to a long era of American domination at the highest level of the game, Ballesteros at times reached heights attained only by true genius. Which is surely why the dark-haired little boy who grew up hitting pebbles with a stick on the vast sandy beach near his home village of Pedrena on Spain's northern coast played golf in a way that was about more than numbers on scorecards Talk about Tiger Woods Progresses.