One of my all time sporting heroes is Seve Ballesteros. He had in droves what today’s modern sportsmen lack – sheer charisma.
You could be watching the British Open, and he would be playing his second from “the car park”. Yet somehow he managed to scramble a good score and inevitably win the tournament.
You would never know what he would do next.
He was once leading the US Masters by ten shots with nine to play and managed to win by four. Greg Norman was also like that, but from out in front, Greg didn’t win.
He still has charisma though.
Whilst we would curse him, particularly if you had bet on him, we couldn’t wait to see that unique white flock of hair parade the fairways the next time.
So what has happened to these characters today?
Tiger Woods has an injury and the sporting corporate world claim that TV golf audiences have dwindled because of it.
Woods, for all his worth and genius, is not in Seve’s class when it comes to evoking roller coasting emotions in people.
He might make you go to sleep, but he rarely loses a tournament when one in front let alone ten.
Who is there after him?
Cricket too has lost its characters.
In the seventies there were guys like Doug Walters, who apart from chewing gum, rarely said much. Yet there was a buzz about when he came out to bat. And his teammates loved him.
England’s last charismatic gladiator was Ian Botham, and everyone flocked to see him bat, bowl or catch. I bet he wished he had the chance of earning a million bucks for an afternoon’s thrash like his modern day contemporaries will in November when they don the flannelled suits in a twenty over winner take all bash.
Gone are the days when Sir Donald Bradman would ignore Ian Chappell’s demand for a piddly increase in daily wages, even when the turnstiles were rolling it in.
But Walters, Botham, and Chappell did have, like Seve, a passion and will to win that no currency can buy. They had their own brand of magnetism.
In the recent past, Adam Gilchrist sat you on edge when he batted, Glenn McGrath fascinated with his predictable metronomes, and, of course, Shane Warne made it worthwhile tuning in to those googlies.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t found anyone to pass his knowledge onto.
Charisma will soon be an obsolete word in sport, so we need someone like Seve to keep it alive.
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