Missing car park tells of Seve's sorry decline

A wistful father said: "He keeps telling me, 'I want to see you win because I've never seen you win.' So perhaps if it doesn't happen, I will have to show him some videos of my victories. Maybe then he will believe me."

Yet it was matched yesterday when, down the 18th, Seve signed some golf balls before he and Xavier walked across to the side of the green and handed them out to some disabled spectators. The galleries applauded warmly because while they might have been saddened to see how, as a golfer, he has become just a pitiful shadow of his young self, they have never forgotten that, as a man, he has that winning way.

As Ballesteros was teeing up later today for his 27th Open appearance, there were many here prepared to tell you how they wish he would call it a day because watching him now is like watching a punch-drunk boxer soaking up another blow too many.

He is the Muhammad Ali of golf, the man with all the gifts except the sense to know when it is time to hang up his gloves.

He cannot let go. No, he says, he is not enjoying his golf but the reason he fights on is that he can still remember how much he loved the game when he was playing well. So can the crowds here. Yet Ballesteros is only 44 and such has been the swift and brutal decline - it is six years since he won his 88th title and you'll find few who believe he will add another - he already seems to fit into the Nicklaus/Player/Palmer school of ceremonial giant.

However, the fact that Seve receives such an awed reception in comparison to so many of the game's present leading lights tells another tale. Take away Tiger Woods and where do you find the sort of thrill that Ballesteros would give us on the golf course?

Woods's pretenders, like Phil Mickelson, David Duval, Ernie Els and Lee Westwood, are good guys. But where is the charisma?

As for two of Ballesteros's tips for the top, the young Australians Adam Scott and Aaron Baddeley, they are undeniably excellent but offer no tale of the unexpected. Seve likes to tell Xavier, already a 14-handicapper at the age of 10, to "play the ball where it lies, to play natural", yet such different, instinctive talents are perilously thin on the ground.

Which brings us to another Spaniard, Sergio Garcia. When, in pursuit of Woods at during the final round of the 1999 US PGA Championship at Medinah, this teenager blasted that impossible recovery shot around the foot of a tree and then skipped after it like a spring lamb, it irresistibly recalled the daring of Ballesteros back in 1976 when he also fell just short at 19 in his pursuit of Johnny Miller at the Royal Birkdale Open.

Two years on, we await his graduation to major winner and Ballesteros can see why many in the sport are impatient to see it. "He is an exciting young player coming through and it would be good for the sport if he was to win here," he said. "It looks to me as if he's playing well and I think he has a good chance this time."

Mind you, Ballesteros had uttered these words before two unfortunate episodes yesterday which seemed guaranteed to affect Garcia's preparations for his first round, which was getting under way about an hour before Ballesteros this afternoon.

When he was expecting to be resting after a trying morning round in the wind, Garcia had found himself watching in horror as his assistant manager, Carlos Rodriguez, was seriously injured after being hit by a buggy outside the clubhouse and ended up joining him at the Blackpool hospital, where Rodriguez underwent an operation for a broken ankle.

Then hours after Garcia had been telling us how he thought his naughty boy days might be over - "I've been behaving quite well. It's something you learn," he had insisted - European Tour officials announced that he was being fined for the derogatory comments he had made about the state of the greens at Loch Lomond during last week's Scottish Open.

So, without even trying, the lad with the angel face but with a bit of the devil in him had quite dominated all the eve-of-championship gossip. Like Ballesteros before him, he has the effortless star quality and that potent mixture of unpredictability and rare talent to help change the face of his game.

A Garcia win - and what could be better than sinking a six-footer to beat Tiger on the last hole, he fantasises cheerily - would energise golf in the way Goran Ivanisevic's Wimbledon victory has brightened up tennis,

There would be an even more wonderful fairytale, of course, if Ballesteros was somehow able to make Ivanisevic's gutter-to-glory transformation look positively humdrum by winning a third Open on these Lancashire links.

"I don't really have the confidence," he said when asked if the miracle was on. "Maybe one day things will change for me again but, if it doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world. It doesn't cost much to have faith. It's free."

The faithless among us fear that the prospect of the name Ballesteros being engraved on the Claret Jug for a fourth time could only possibly occur some time around the year 2015 at Lytham when Xavier, who had the old man carrying his bag here the other day as he belted the ball 175 metres straight down the middle, hits his stride.

Trouble is, though, that even with the help of a white-haired caddie who knows every car park and cranny of this course, Xavier may still find the 10-times champion Woods and five-times winner Garcia a bit too much of a handful.