SAN ROQUE, SPAIN | That February day, 11 days after his 60th birthday, José María Olazábal sat in the clubhouse at Valderrama and looked out over the back nine holes of the golf course, the site of Europe’s victory in the 1997 Ryder Cup. A gusting poniente (wind from the west) was rattling the cork trees that line the course and kicking up white horses of spray on the Mediterranean in the distance.
In his homeland, where he has lived all his life, the 1994 and 1999 Masters champion looked and felt content. Hosannas have rained down on his head throughout his career, for his golfing skills and his personal characteristics.
“If you ask anyone on tour who’s most liked, favoured, respected they’ll say José María,” said Colin Montgomerie, a friend and rival since the day the two men met in the final of the 1984 Amateur Championship – and Olazábal, at 18 (two years younger) won. “Why? For his lack of ego considering his two majors and what he has achieved. There’s a lot of people who have achieved nothing in the game with an ego that is beyond words and you listen to them and think ‘What? Shut up!’ This guy has achieved everything in the game and yet the word ego doesn’t come into it. As a golfer, yes, brilliant in every way and as a person just a lovely, lovely guy.”
“What I can say is that for me personally I am very, very happy that I lived and played in a time when Chema [Olazábal’s nickname] played and was around,” said Thomas Bjørn, Europe’s 2018 Ryder Cup captain.
The next morning, Olazábal set out from the 10th tee at Valderrama with Álvaro Quirós, the Spanish professional, carrying his golf clubs. He was practising to regain form after a shoulder injury the previous September and in time for a senior tournament at Aloha Golf Club a few miles up the coast towards Marbella. He is all business on the practice ground, hitting 100 balls to warm up in little more than half as many minutes.
He walks briskly with a distinctive, almost splay-footed waddle and is very deliberate over the ball. He waggles his club many times and rocks from side to side as he shifts his weight. All the time he is muttering quietly. “I am talking to the ball,” Olazábal said. “I am saying to it: ‘I don’t know where you went last time. Where the hell are you going to go this time?’”
True to form, an occasional drive began straight and then veered left, the one bad arrow in his quiver. But also true to form was a 90-yard shot from the bunker short of the sloping 17th green at Valderrama. Clipped so cleanly that it raised hardly a grain of sand, it cleared the sentinel water and ended 3 feet from the flag. His short game is the stuff of legends.
Even 42 years after losing to Olazábal in the Amateur, Montgomerie remembered it as if it was yesterday. “He had this pork pie hat on. I was aged 20, an amateur golfer and a rookie one at that. He was an 18-year-old amateur playing a professional game. His short game was way beyond mine [at that stage] and I got thrashed.”
Tom Lehman finished runner-up at the 1994 Masters when Olazábal became the second Spaniard after Seve Ballesteros to win the first of the game’s four annual major championships. Since then, Sergio García and Jon Rahm have joined their countrymen in this distinction. “Some guys you play with when they are playing poorly and it looks like they’re shooting 75 and they do,” Lehman said. “What impresses me about José María is that on the days when he wasn’t playing well and looked like he would shoot 78, he’d shoot a 71.”
Comparisons between his two victories at Augusta come easily to Olazábal. “In my first I tried not to let external things affect me, the noises, the atmosphere, the light on the course. It was a sense of relief when I won. When I made that putt on 18 I gave a fist pump and looked down. I’ve always imagined myself winning a major and when that happened I thought it was going to be a total joy moment.
“Actually it was the opposite. It was a sense of ‘Well, I’ve done it. I have achieved one of my goals.’ That was it, taking the monkey out of my back.”
In his first victory Olazábal’s play on and around the greens was magical. He had 30 single putts, chipped in twice and got out of bunkers and into the hole in two strokes every single time.
“But the second, I was much more aware of my surroundings, the colour of the flags, the light, the crowds, the clapping, the noise,” he said. “Because of what I went through between 1995 and 1997 [first diagnosed as arthritis, it was later discovered to be nerve pressure in his lower back that was affecting his feet and ankles] I remember on the Saturday walking alongside the lake on the 16th, I said to my caddie, ‘Enjoy these moments because they don’t come along very often.’
“On Sunday, in my battle with Greg [Norman], I remember my bunker shot to save par from the back bunker on 12. That was a fantastic shot. I remember Greg holed an eagle putt on 13 and I holed a birdie putt to stay one ahead and how the crowds reacted first to Greg’s putt and then to mine.
“It was a privilege for me because I thought my career was over. Greg made an eagle putt on the 13th and as I was walking to my putt I said to myself, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’ That is how I felt at that moment. I really enjoyed that Masters.”
“Three [Continental European] guys have won two Masters and thus have six green jackets between them,” Montgomerie said. “These six green jackets belong to [Bernhard] Langer, who is underestimated with regard to his short game, Seve and of course Olazábal. These guys were magicians, the best we have ever had and I think the reason is because of their short game, the putting, chipping and pitching from 100 yards. You know 70 percent of all golf shots in the pro game are from 100 yards of a green and in.
“I remember watching Olazábal hitting out of a bunker on the range at Augusta,” he continued. “The green was firm and fast, and he was hitting downhill and I’m thinking: ‘How does he get the ball to stop that near the hole?’”