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This article first appeared in the October 6, 1997, issue of Sports Illustrated.
It was Seve all the way. It was Seve's Ryder Cup, in Seve's Spain, on Seve's trap-sprung course, won by Seve's hand-wrangled team, played under Seve's terms, for Seve's honor. It was Seve everywhere you looked, Seve in the world's only Formula One golf cart, driving rings around U.S. captain Tom Kite, cutting through bunkers, sending fans flying and separating them from their disposable cameras, showing up wherever Seve was needed and showing up wherever he wasn't, lining up putts, arguing over club selection, handing out advice and inspiration and, quite often, a sandwich. 
It was Seve driving his players out of their minds and straight into the most flawless golf some of them had ever played. It was Seve and the only result he could have lived with, a win by Europe over the U.S. last week at the soggy Valderrama Golf Club in Sotogrande, Spain. Yeah, Seve won the Ryder Cup and never fired a shot.
True, it was also Scotland's Colin Montgomerie and his big mouth and even bigger game. And it was England's Nick Faldo becoming the all-time Ryder Cup gorilla. And it was Tiger Woods becoming the first cat ever to lay an egg, and it was Davis Love III going O-fer-Spain. But above all, this Ryder Cup was about Severiano Ballesteros, Europe's first-time captain, soul and tyrant. "Whenever we were unsure of a shot, Seve would appear, out of the blue," said Spain's Ignacio Garrido. "He was our father. We may have held the clubs, but Seve hit the shots."
Kite did a wonderful job, too, except that he departed Spain looking like a hoodwinked tourist, with an empty wallet, an upset stomach and a Spanish doubloon that will turn green on his nightstand. Everything Seve wanted, Seve got—and a lot of it Kite let him have.
Seve wanted the Cup held in Spain. He got it. Seve wanted the unheard-of Miguel Angel Martin, who had made his team, to get the bum's rush in favor of Seve's soulmate, Jose Maria Olazabal, who hadn't. He got it. Seve wanted the format flipped so that the better-ball matches came before the alternate-shot matches. He got it. Seve wanted the course tweaked to disarm U.S. bombers such as Woods (1-3-1 on the weekend), Love (0-4) and Phil Mickelson (1-1-2). He got it, pinching many of the fairways at 270 or 280 yards and putting ugly new swaths of rough across the middle of others so that half the time the Americans seemed to be punching out of paella.
"Seve took the drivers out of their hands," said Faldo, a short knocker and happy for it. "I played with Tiger, and he only hit a driver once."
Seve and his team were so far ahead of the Americans that this became history's only two-day Ryder Cup. The last day saw a mad U.S. rush to make the score look respectable, with victories in seven singles matches out of 12, but it was all just polishing the brass on the Titanic. Hell, you had the feeling the Yanks were doomed the minute they got on the Concorde. Somewhere over the Azores, Brad Faxon hit a ball from the cockpit to the back galley, and it didn't stop until 23 seconds and 8.7 miles later, a world record for time and distance traveled by a golf shot. That was the last putt of any significance that an American made. The Europeans got their 8.7 miles' worth, only in smaller chunks. "They just made tons of putts," an exhausted Tom Lehman (1-1-2) said on Saturday. "And we didn't make squat."
When the Yanks landed, Seve was in their faces. "I have 12 guys who can beat Tiger Woods," he said, setting the tone. Montgomerie picked it up from there, taking a slap at Woods by telling the Glasgow Herald, "With all due respect to Lehman, [Justin] Leonard and Love, who are their next three top guys? Beating them doesn't mean as much." Even the fans got into it, parading around the cork trees of Valderrama wearing TIGER: NOT THE FULL MONTY T-shirts. They were right. Montgomerie earned 3 1/2 points, Woods just 1 1/2.
Seve ran his team the way an absolute monarch would have. When he announced his morning pairings for the first day, he hadn't even warned the players he was benching. "I suppose they will see it on TV right now," he said. Kite told his benched players personally, presumably with a comforting hug.
Kite promised all his players they would play each day of the team matches, and they did, and everybody felt very included and the Americans got very creamed. Seve sat three players the first day: Wales's Ian Woosnam, Northern Ireland's Darren Clarke and Denmark's Thomas Bjorn. "Do you believe that?" a U.S. player said. "Woosie's a what, seven-time Ryder Cupper? That's bull."
All three of the benched Europeans went out on Saturday and won. "Maybe that's what I needed," said Woosie. "Something to get me mad."
Seve was manic, but the players understood. Making him surrender the Cup in his own country was more than they could bear. "We can't let that happen," said Monty. "He'd be a blubbering mess."
Seve was a mess as it was. On Thursday, the day before the matches began, the phone rang at 5:15 a.m. in the room of Seve's Sancho Panza, assistant coach Miguel Angel Jimenez. "Come to my room," Seve said. "We need to discuss the pairings." The pairings weren't due until 2 p.m.
"Are you crazy?" Jimenez said groggily.
"Well, this is very important."
Jimenez went.
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