CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Seve Ballesteros was as inspirational in Europe as Arnold Palmer was in America, a handsome figure who feared no shot and often played from where no golfer had ever been.

In a long list of spectacular shots, perhaps the most memorable came from a parking lot next to the 16th fairway at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in the 1979 British Open. Leading by two shots in the final round, he drove into the car park, had a car removed to get his free drop, then fired his second shot into 15 feet and made birdie on his way to his first major.

“He was a man who got into trouble. Only for Seve, there was no such thing as trouble,” Gary Player once said. “He could manufacture shots like a genius.”

His last challenge came from an unbeatable foe: cancer.

Ballesteros fainted in a Madrid airport while waiting to board a flight to Germany on Oct. 6, 2008, and was subsequently diagnosed with the brain tumor. He underwent four separate operations, including a 6-hour procedure to remove the tumor and reduce swelling around the brain. After leaving the hospital, his treatment continued with chemotherapy.

Ballesteros looked thin and pale while making several public appearances in 2009 after being given what he referred to as the “mulligan of my life.” He rarely has been seen in public since March 2010, when he fell off a golf cart and hit his head on the ground.

His few appearances or public statements were usually in connection with his Seve Ballesteros Foundation to fight cancer. He wanted but was unable to take part in a champions exhibition at St. Andrews.

Such was his stature, even out of the public eye, that European players celebrated his most recent birthday — the Saturday of the Masters — as if it was a national holiday.

For such greatness, his career was relatively short because of back injuries.

Ballesteros won a record 50 times on the European Tour, first as a 19-year-old in the Dutch Open, his final victory when he was 38 at the 1995 Peugeot Open in his native Spain. That also was his last year playing in the Ryder Cup, where he had a 20-12-5 record in eight appearances. He was captain in 1997 when Europe won at Valderrama.

Ballesteros was the reason the Ryder Cup was expanded in 1979 to include continental Europe, and the Europeans finally beat the United States in 1985 to begin more than two decades of dominance. While others have played in more matches and won more points, no player better represents the spirit and desire of Europe than Ballesteros.

He announced his retirement in a tearful press conference at Carnoustie before the 2007 British Open. Ballesteros had returned to Augusta National that year to play the Masters one last time, but shot 86-80 to finish last. After turning 50, he tried one Champions Tour event, but again came in last.

His back was ailing, his eyes were no longer as lively, and his best game had left him years earlier.

“I don’t have the desire,” Ballesteros said.

That desire was as big a part of his game as any shot he manufactured from the trees, the sand, just about anywhere.

Born April 9, 1957, in the tiny town of Pedrena, Spain, he learned golf with only one club — a 3-iron — that forced him to create shots most players could never imagine.

Ballesteros first gained major notoriety at 19 in the final round of the British Open at Royal Birkdale, where he threaded a shot through the bunkers and onto the green at the 18th hole, finishing second to Johnny Miller and in a tie with Jack Nicklaus.

“He invented shots around the green,” Nicklaus said in the weeks before Ballesteros was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1999. “You don’t find many big hitters like him with that kind of imagination and touch around the green. He’s been a big inspiration to golf in continental Europe, more than anyone has.”

Ballesteros went on to win the Order of Merit on the European tour that year, the first of six such titles. Two years later, he won the first time he teed it up in America, a one-shot victory at the Greater Greensboro Open.

Partly because of his humble roots, partly because of his Spanish blood, Ballesteros always played as though he had something to prove. Even after some called him “Car Park Champion” for his shot at Lytham when he won the 1979 British Open, the Spaniard showed that was no fluke when he arrived at Augusta National the next year.

He obliterated the field in the 1980 Masters, much like Tiger Woods did in 1997. Applying his genius to a course built for imagination, Ballesteros took a seven-shot lead into the final round and led by 10 at one point until he started spraying tee shots and won by four. Even so, at 23 he was the youngest Masters champion until Woods won at age 21.

Ballesteros won the Masters again in 1983, and he was equally dominant in golf’s oldest championship. He won the British Open in 1984 at St. Andrews over Tom Watson, then won again at Lytham in 1988 by closing with a 65 — the best score of the tournament — to beat Nick Price and Nick Faldo.

His career was marked by nasty disputes with European tour officials and PGA Tour officials. He quit the European tour in 1981 in a disagreement over appearance money, the only year he missed the Ryder Cup. He became angry with PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman in 1985 for not playing the required 15 events for membership.

Despite his five majors and 87 titles around the world, Ballesteros forever will be linked to the Ryder Cup. He developed an “us against them” attitude that became infectious with what had been an inferior European team. He made his teammates believe.

Ballesteros was headed for defeat in 1983 at PGA National, his ball beneath the lip of a bunker, some 245 yards from the green, when he lashed a 3-wood to the fringe and escape with a halve against Fuzzy Zoeller. The Americans narrowly won, but the Ryder Cup was never the same after that year — and perhaps after that shot.

“His desire to beat the Americans was paramount, and probably the reason they beat us,” Tom Watson said. “The Ryder Cup became the focus of world golf, and Seve was right there as the leader.”

He teamed with Jose Maria Olazabal to become the most formidable partnership in Ryder Cup history, producing an 11-2-2 record. In his final Ryder Cup, at Oak Hill in 1995, he was playing a singles match against Tom Lehman when Ballesteros drove wildly to the right.

A TV commentator said his only two choices were to pitch back to the fairway or play a big hook around a massive tree. Ballesteros studied his options, then hit over the tree to the front of the green.

Such was the unpredictable nature of Ballesteros. There have not been many like him, if any at all.

“Seve is a genius, one of the few geniuses in the game,” Ben Crenshaw once said. “The thing is, Seve is never in trouble. He’s in the trees quite a lot, but that’s not trouble for him. That’s normal.”

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Seve Ballesteros is a Spanish professional golfer and former World No. 1, who was one of the sport’s leading figures from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. He announced himself to the golfing world in 1976, when at age 19 he finished second at The Open Championship. A part of a gifted golfing family, Ballesteros won five major tournaments between the years of 1979 and 1988, including The Open Championship three times, and The Masters twice. He was also successful in the Ryder Cup, helping the European team to five wins both as a player and captain. He is best known for his great short game, and his erratic driving of the golf ball.

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:

Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more below I just emailed to him myself at 1:49pm CST on May 6, 2011.

Senator Rand Paul on Feb 7, 2011 wrote the article “A Modest $500 Billion Proposal: My spending cuts would keep 85% of government funding and not touch Social Security,” Wall Street Journal and he observed:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this will be the third consecutive year in which the federal government is running a deficit near or greater than $1 trillion. The solution to the government’s fiscal crisis must begin by cutting spending in all areas, particularly in those that can be better run at the state or local level. Last month I introduced legislation to do just that. And though it seems extreme to some—containing over $500 billion in spending cuts enacted over one year—it is a necessary first step toward ending our fiscal crisis…

My proposal, not surprisingly, has been greeted skeptically in Washington, where serious spending cuts are a rarity. But it is a modest proposal when measured against the size of our mounting debt. It would keep 85% of our government funding in place and not touch Social Security or Medicare. But by reducing wasteful spending and shuttering departments that are beyond the constitutional role of the federal government, such as the Department of Education, we can cut nearly 40% of our projected deficit and at the same time remove thousands of big-government bureaucrats who stand in the way of efficiency.

Here are some of his specific suggestions:

Health and Human Services

Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease

HHS [Discretionary Only] $72.493 $26.510 B 26%

The Department of Health and Human Services is the largest department in the federal government. The department includes programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other entitlement programs. HHS, and the programs within, remains one of the government’s largest challenges – and among the largest contributors to our fiscal crisis.

In fact, Medicare alone has a $38 trillion unfunded liability, and will continue to grow until it eventually consumes all government outlays.

Unfortunately, there are a number of individuals who have failed to set aside savings, or have failed to plan adequately based on the assumption that they would be eligible for certain entitlement programs such as Medicare or Medicaid. These programs need to be reformed, not necessarily just cut, and therefore, this proposal does not include most of the mandatory spending at the HHS. However, because the department is so large, it would have been negligent to avoid other areas which can provide much needed government savings.

This proposal takes most of the agency’s discretionary programs back to FY2008 levels, and makes further reductions to the Public Health Service programs.

Food and Drug Administration: Reduce 62 Percent

The Food and Drug Administration is another example of an agency that continues to expand every year in power and funding. New FDA powers granted by the recent Food Safety Modernization Act provide examples of the most recent growth of federal government overreach, granting the government further intrusion into the nation’s food supply.

Health Resources and Services Administration: Reduce 34 Percent

One way to combat illegal immigration is to remove the benefits our country provides to non-citizens. The Health Resources and Services Administration provides funding for 1,645 free health clinics for migrant workers all over the United States, contributing to the incentives for illegal immigrants to take advantage of our country and its taxpayers.

These clinics are an unnecessary burden, and do not serve the interests of Americans.

Indian Health Services: Reduce 46 Percent

The federal government’s Indian Health Services agency is notoriously wrought with fraud. A June 2009 Government Accountability Office reports that “millions of dollars in property and equipment continue to be lost or stolen.” It is time to put an end to this blatant government waste and tighten the belt on such programs.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Reduce 28 Percent

The annual budget for the Centers for Disease Control also keeps increasing annually, in spite of “cost-saving efforts” by the department in the way of travel expenses and contract reductions to the tune of $100 million. It seems no matter how much money is appropriated to this or any government agency, they find a “need” for it. It is time for the CDC to work aggressively to find savings in other areas, particularly focusing on domestic priorities rather than spending billions on overseas initiatives.

National Institute of Health: Reduce 37 Percent

President Obama’s FY2011 budget calls for a $1 billion increase in funding to the National Institutes for Health. Reducing federal grants in this area would realize billions in savings. Each of the HHS cuts called for in this proposal will stop the bleeding in these ever-increasing budgets 

 

  

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with his family

 

I posted a portion of an article by John Fund of the Wall Street Journal that pointed out that many businesses are leaving California because of all of their government red tape and moving to Texas. My username is SalineRepublican and this is how “Couldn’tBeBetter” responded this morning:

Saline, if Texas is so great, don’t let the door hit you as you head southwest.

Frankly, I wouldn’t do that to myself or anyone I love. That Texas attitude is what happens when Republicans take over anything. Ray-Gun selfishness all over again but on a state-wide basis and a mouth ten times larger than their brain. BTW, why is Perry asking for fire aid? I thought he didn’t need the rest of us. When those oil wells finally play out, Texas will be a welfare state like Somalia with the same attitude. Let them go and good-bye, Saline.