AUGUSTA, Ga. — In Europe, the man who popularized golf was the Spaniard Seve Ballesteros, who was Arnold Palmer with an accent. Like Palmer, Ballesteros was very, very good when he hit his drives straight and even better if they went crooked.
In 1980, three months after Sergio García was born, Ballesteros won the first of his two Masters titles. García grew up idolizing the swashbuckling Ballesteros, whose influence on García’s golf and his life was immense.
Nearly six years after Ballesteros died of brain cancer, on what would have been his 60th birthday, García conquered the field, Augusta National and his demons — not necessarily in that order — to win the Masters.