SEVE BALLESTEROS, a five-time major champion whose passion and gift for imaginative shot-making invigorated European golf and the Ryder Cup, has died from complications of a cancerous brain tumour. He was 54.

A statement on Ballesteros’ website Saturday said the golf great died peacefully at 2:10 a.m. local time, surrounded by his family at his home in Pedrena, in northern Spain.

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.

England’s Lee Westwood, No. 1 in the world rankings, said it was a “sad day” for golf.

“Lost an inspiration, genius, roll model, hero and friend,” Westwood posted Saturday on Twitter. “Seve made European golf what it is today. RIP Seve.”

Career cut short

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 his ball into the lot, had a car removed to get his free drop, then fired his second shot to 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 tumour. He underwent four separate operations, including a 6½-hour procedure to remove the tumour 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 was 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 in the British Open.

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.

Record wins

Ballesteros won a record 50 times on the European tour, his first as a 19-year-old in the Dutch Open, his last 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 it 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.

The Ryder Cup

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.

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 green 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.”

Ballesteros and wife Carmen divorced in 2004. They had three children.

The Spaniard stayed active in golf after he stopped playing regularly, mainly through golf course design.

- AP