There are few better ways to start the week than listening to Josh White and his daughter.
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
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Seve Ballesteros, R.I.P.
Seve Ballesteros – the most creative professional golfer of our time — finally lost his battle with brain cancer yesterday at the age of 54. Geoff Shackelford does his usual comprehensive job of cataloging the tributes (see also here) to the iconic Spaniard. Also, don’t miss this Jaime Diaz/Golf Digest interview of Ballesteros from last year as he reflected on his career and life.
With six Europeans (including the top three) in the current top 10 players in the World Golf Rankings, it’s fully evident that impact that Ballesteros had on the development of European golf. It is not a stretch to say that his influence on the European Tour was every bit as dramatic as that of Arnold Palmer on the PGA Tour.
Ballesteros’ style was quite similar to that of Phil Mickelson – a risk-taker who combined a sometimes out-of-control swing with a phenomenal short game to win five major championships (two Masters and three Open Championships). However, Ballesteros was somewhat different in that he burst on the scene as a teenager — he won the Dutch Open at the age of 19 and the led the European Order of Merit at the ages of 19-21. He was 22 when he won his first Open Championship in 1979 and he was just turning 23 when he was the first European to win The Masters. At the time, he was the youngest golfer to win the Masters.
Those championships propelled him to an extraordinary career, but his most compelling influence may have been in regard to the Ryder Cup. When that traditional match changed format in 1979 to become a competition between the U.S. and Europe rather than U.S. vs Great Britain and Ireland match that the Americans had lost just three times in over 50 years, Ballesteros grabbed the competition by the throat and wouldn’t let go. He played eight times in the Ryder Cup, losing only 12 times in 35 matches and won the 1997 match as the Euro captain. When the Euro team dropped him for the 1981 match because he had played mostly that season on the PGA Tour, the U.S. pummeled the Euros by nine points. The Euros didn’t make that mistake again.
In addition to being the most dashing and charismatic player of his time, Ballesteros was also quite witty. Few golfers will ever forget his classic response to a question of what happened when he four-putted one of Augusta National’s lightning-fast greens during the Masters: “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.” Or his hilarious response to a question on how was it that he took an eight on one of Augusta National’s par 4’s: “I meesed a three-footer for a seven.”
But Ballesteros was different from Mickelson in that he lost his game in his early 30’s (although not his competitive fire – remember his captaincy of the 1997 Ryder Cup?). He was 34 when he last contended at a major championship and he made his last cut at the Open Championship at the age of 37. He made his last cut at the Masters when he was 38.
For those interested in the mechanics of the golf swing, Ballesteros’ decline is fascinating. As noted swing instructor Wayne DeFranceso reverently explains in this video analysis, Ballesteros won five major championships and 87 golf tournaments around the world with a swing that contained a fundamental defect. Through his extraordinary athletic ability and amazing short game, Ballesteros was able to compensate for the swing defect.
However, as he aged, Ballesteros’ swing fault became more pronounced as he dealt with chronic back pain and his short game ebbed a bit. The combination was too much for even Ballesteros to overcome, although he searched diligently for years in an attempt to revive his career. Unfortunately, he never made it to the man in Houston who specializes in golf swing reclamation projects and who just might have helped Ballesteros compete again at the top levels of the game.
The video below is a wonderful review of Ballesteros’ career and shows what made him such a compelling character.
Rest in peace, Seve. You will be missed.
Willie Nelson, 1974
Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.
From The Rough
The train wreck of entitlements growth
Another lucid presentation from Jeff Miron, this time on the inevitable insolvency that will result from current levels of entitlement spending:
Technophysio evolution
Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert W. Fogel has been leading a research project over the past 30 years analyzing the changes in the size and shape of the human body in relation to economic, social and other changes throughout history.
As this NY Times article notes, the conclusions being reached from the project are fascinating:
“The rate of technological and human physiological change in the 20th century has been remarkable,” Mr. Fogel said . . . “Beyond that, a synergy between the improved technology and physiology is more than the simple addition of the two.”
This “technophysio evolution,” powered by advances in food production and public health, has so outpaced traditional evolution, the authors argue, that people today stand apart not just from every other species, but from all previous generations of Homo sapiens as well. [. . .]
To take just a few examples, the average adult man in 1850 in America stood about 5 feet 7 inches and weighed about 146 pounds; someone born then was expected to live until about 45. In the 1980s the typical man in his early 30s was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed about 174 pounds and was likely to pass his 75th birthday.
Across the Atlantic, at the time of the French Revolution, a 30-something Frenchman weighed about 110 pounds, compared with 170 pounds now. And in Norway an average 22-year-old man was about 5 ¬Ω inches taller at the end of the 20th century (5 feet 10.7 inches) than in the middle of the 18th century (5 feet 5.2 inches). . .
Despite this accelerated physical development over the past 150 years, one factor that the researchers did not anticipate is threatening to derail the progress:
One thing Mr. Fogel did not expect when he first started his research was that “overnutrition” would become the primary health problem in the United States and other Western nations. Obesity, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension and some cancers, threatens to upset the links in the upward march of size, health and longevity that he and his colleagues have spent years documenting.
And as this recent post notes, that “overnutrition problem” is not going to be an easy one to solve.
The end of the notebook?
The iPad began the notebook computer’s demise. The Android tablet looks as if it might finish it.
The perspective of Ric Elias
Ric Elias was a passenger on US Airways Flight 1549, which Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger crash landed in the middle of the Hudson River a couple of years ago. But before Sullenberger landed that Airbus A320 and the flight crew successfully evacuated everyone, Elias and the other passengers confronted the very real prospect that they were going to die. In this inspirational five minute video, Elias explains how that experience changed him. Watching it is a good way to start the week. Enjoy.
Shake Your Moneymaker
Led Zeppelin and James Brown? Genuis!.
Dress for the moment
The latest in our continuing series of creative commercials.