AMONG the hundreds of e-mails received by Greg Norman congratulating him on a notable performance at Royal Birkdale, the one that moved the Australian most came from his old friend and rival, Seve Ballesteros.
Arguably the most creative player the game has ever produced, the Spaniard's admiration for the way the 53-year-old competed in the Open meant a lot to the Australian.
"I got one of best e-mails I've ever had from Seve Ballesteros," recalled the S
hark. "I must have got 500 or 700 e-mails and texts. To have the accolades and the adulation from players like Seve – he wasn't the only one, I just mention him because his e-mail to me was very, very powerful. Those type of things really mean a lot, and that's what I mean (when I said] I had a lot of mini-victories.
"I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts of it, but it was just a lot of admiration, the way I played the game, the shot-making ability that I showed, that type of stuff.
"Seve was brilliant at it. He was one of the best. You would put Seve and Trevino in the top two in the world for the way they played on a links. He made comments on some of the shots I hit: 'It was great to see that, because the younger players nowadays don't do that as much', and just things like that."
Ballesteros was himself a three-time master of the Open links, winning at Lytham & St Annes in 1979 and 1988 as well as ending Tom Watson's run at St Andrews in 1984.
The full article contains 285 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
