by Jaime Diaz

Of course, the sight of golf's ultimate competitor performing so ineptly in the game's ultimate competition-in his three matches, Ballesteros hit three fairways-was as impossible to turn away from as a train wreck. Six months later it is still painful to watch him play. Ballesteros arrives this week at the Masters playing the worst golf of his 22-year professional career, his confidence in tatters and with no clear sign that things will get better. Ballesteros used to come to Augusta, where he has won twice and held the lead during the final nine on three other occasions, primed to display his gifts of imagination, touch and determination on the course that best brought them out. This season Ballesteros, who will turn 39 two days before the opening round, comes hoping his favorite stomping ground will stir some remnant of his former self.

Ballesteros has emerged from too many slumps to accept the notion that this one represents a final crossroads, but the way he winces when asked about his play at Oak Hill or the state of his golf swing or the condition of his troublesome back or anything else that hints at the current fragility of his game indicates an urgent desire to quiet a mind noisy with doubts.

"It's very painful when you have to talk all the time about these things," the Spaniard said in fluent English after being asked to discuss his situation. "It's not easy-why this, why that, and what are you going to do and why don't you do this. It drives you crazy. It's not good, because the mind is very powerful, and everything is negative, negative, negative."

Point taken. But the problem is, when it comes to his golf, there is nothing positive. It has been this way since his game went into a steep tailspin shortly after his last victory, in May 1995, at the Peugeot Open de Espa–a.

After that Ballesteros missed four straight cuts, culminating in an 81-80 at the Scottish Open. Had it not been for the Ryder Cup, Ballesteros says, he would have stopped playing for the year in July. Immediately after the match Ballesteros announced he would be taking a five-month break from competition, the longest of his career.

At his birthplace in Pedrena, Spain, and at his tax-haven residence in Monte Carlo, Ballesteros played with his children; went to the movies with his wife; followed a strict exercise regimen of cycling, running and weight training; reveled briefly in being named the captain of the European Ryder Cup team for the 1997 match in Valderrama, Spain; and thought as little as possible about golf. He didn't even hit a ball until Jan. 9, apparently harboring the hope that all the knots he had worked himself into would somehow untangle and he could return to the game with a clear mind.

Ballesteros made his first official appearance last month at the Moroccan Open-his torso visibly tighter from the loss of 12 pounds, his bronzed features even more chiseled and his back apparently in fine fettle. But the moment he stepped onto the golf course, it was as if he had never been away. Ballesteros christened his return with a drive blocked weakly to the right and shot 78-79. Last week he withdrew from the Players Championship, complaining of a bad back.

Although his putting, short game and trouble shots remain superb and his short-iron play is respectable, once Ballesteros moves up to about a four-iron, he is lost. He scatters all manner of misses-although his most frequent are low hooks and high fades. His straight shots tend to balloon too high. In his prime a long hitter, Ballesteros is now not only crooked off the tee but short as well. The riflelike retort that used to mark his club's contact with the ball has been replaced by a muffled clank that he says "hurts your ears."

"It's shocking to see how much Seve has deteriorated," says swing instructor David Leadbetter, who has worked intermittently with Ballesteros over the years. Curtis Strange speaks for most of his peers when he says, "We all struggle at times, but I have never seen a player of Seve's caliber hit the kind of shots he was hitting at the Ryder Cup."

"My game cannot get any worse," Ballesteros sadly conceded during his debacle in Morocco. "I used to overpower the golf course, and now the golf course overpowers me."

How did this happen? At a time when contemporaries such as Nick Faldo, Greg Norman and Nick Price-players Ballesteros used to beat regularly-are in the prime of their careers, why is the man acknowledged as the most talented of the bunch all but washed up? An obvious answer is fatigue. It's easy to forget that Ballesteros has been a professional since the age of 16, something he regrets.

"I should have started three years later," he told biographer Lauren St John. "I lost all my growing-up years. I haven't lived a normal life."

Ballesteros, who grew up poor, has also suffered from self-imposed pressure to make as much money as possible. His globe-trotting in the 1980s for exorbitant appearance fees seems unwise in retrospect, first because of the wear and tear, and second because it was the main factor keeping him from joining the PGA Tour, where others such as Faldo, Norman and Price improved their skills.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Ballesteros, who comes from a family-oriented culture, has not won a major title since marrying in late 1988. His brood now includes three children, ranging in age from five to two. "When I'm not playing well, I ask myself, is it worth it to miss my family to play like that," he says. "That question is always in my mind."

On the golf course Ballesteros's intensity and style of play, which constantly requires high-risk recoveries and clutch putting, have also been enervating. "Maybe his system has just had enough," says Sandy Lyle, another supremely talented player whose flame seems to have been doused too early. Strange, with a rueful smile, also speaks from experience. "Look how many great years Seve had," he says. "Hey, it don't last but so long."

A quick perusal of Ballesteros's career shows that he has been losing his skills for years. Though he was on a decidedly upward trajectory for the first decade of his career, winning 37 titles by the age of 27, including four majors, his second decade has been less productive.

By his own admission Ballesteros suffered a major blow to his confidence in the final round of the 1986 Masters. Leading by one and facing a four-iron second shot to the par-5 15th, Ballesteros hit a fat toe hook that line-drived into the pond guarding the green. The ensuing bogey knocked him out of the lead for good. The next year Ballesteros got into a playoff with Norman and Larry Mize, but he three-putted from 25 feet on the first extra hole and left the course in tears.

Those losses did not destroy Ballesteros, for he won the 1988 British Open, but he was never quite the same after that disastrous four-iron in '86. The British victory was due to one of the greatest putting performances of his career. A change to a flatter swing plane already had robbed Ballesteros of power and subsequently would fail to provide the expected benefits in control. Since 1988 Ballesteros has won his share of European tour events, 12. But in the majors, the ultimate measure, he has stopped being a serious factor. Out of the 22 majors he has entered in this decade, he has missed the cut eight times.

For all his gifts Ballesteros has never been a consistently good ball striker. While his best shots are superlative, his worst ones are terrible. The wild shot that can lead to double bogey or worse always looms nerve-rackingly large. And though Ballesteros's skill in escaping trouble may be unequaled, it is no match for a Faldo's or a Norman's from the middle of the fairway. "Even at his best, I always thought Seve was living right on the edge," says Lanny Wadkins. "He erased a lot of mistakes with his short game. I equate Seve with Crenshaw, but Ben would have his straight-hitting periods. Trying to play from crooked drives can wear on you."

Ballesteros is a relatively poor ball striker for an obvious reason. Although his swing is aesthetically pleasing, it is not grounded in sound mechanics. For years he played on talent and heart, but his shaky foundation has betrayed him. Essentially Ballesteros's path into the ball is too steep. From the top of his swing Ballesteros fails to flatten his plane into the ball into the rounder sweeping motion that is the mark of the most consistent hitters. Instead, his club comes down at a sharp angle. "Seve's problem is his swing," says Bernhard Langer with characteristic pith. "He must change it."

Faldo, Norman and Price eliminated similar downswing moves through extended work with instructors. Ballesteros, in contrast, has always had trouble staying with one teacher. His longest such association was with Mac O'Grady, from the mid-'80s until 1994. But since the two fell out after last year's Masters, Ballesteros has once again been on his own. By nature both impatient and distrustful of mechanics, Ballesteros is also suggestible, a blend that has led him to work sporadically and without continuity with many instructors. That has been a recipe for confusion: Listen to many, borrow liberally, but closely follow no one.

"Patience is not my strongest point," he says. "I'm very much for getting things quickly." Adds Joe Collet, who was Ballesteros's manager for 15 years, "If Seve has one defect, it is that he overweights the short-term solution. He always wants a panacea, a quick fix. That has hurt him with building his game."

Ballesteros is attempting to return to the natural action he developed as a boy hitting rocks with a three-iron on the beaches of Pedrena. It means he will be trying to swing the way he did when he was playing his best, in the early '80s, using a longer, more upright backswing in the hope of recapturing a natural groove. "The game used to be very simple for me," says Ballesteros. "After a round I would never worry about the game, never think about it. Lately, all I do is think about the game. I need to go back to what is natural and stop worrying." That comes as heartening news to those who have an understanding of Ballesteros's style of play.

"Seve looks like he has lost the freedom in his swing and gotten caught up in trying to put himself in positions," says Crenshaw. "He can't forget that his feel, his instinct, is his gift. For him to play the way he can play, he has to trust that gift."

"It's going to take time," Ballesteros said recently while practicing. "The important thing is to start playing the game again. If I do that, I will win trophies. I'm going to fight for it." And if he loses the fight? "You know, there are worse things in life than just playing bad golf," he said. "This is nothing. Nothing. We all suffer one way or another, but other people suffer more than this. I have had a wonderful career. I want it to continue."

With that, he returned to a two-hour session on the range during which he hit no iron longer than a six. Periodically he would ask his caddie, Martin Gray, if his backswing was "bigger, higher," but mostly he was silent. When his friend and fellow player Eduardo Romero stopped to watch, Ballesteros hit several good shots to Romero's approving nods. Without looking up, Ballesteros only said, "Poco a poco."

Little by little is a long road, but it is one that Ballesteros may have finally accepted. If his path is right, few doubt he has the resolve to return to the highest levels of the game. "When it comes to competition, Seve burns like a nuclear reactor," says O'Grady. "But he became unhappy because he started letting winning majors mean everything. He got so disappointed that he stopped loving the game. He has to turn that reactor loose on the process of becoming a great golfer again. If he does, there's no doubt he can play as well as Norman. In fact, in a street fight, I'd take Seve."

Gary McCord is more concise. "Seve has too much heart to be finished," he says. "You can't kill that heart. He'll be back." It probably won't be this week. He's training his sights on the British Open at Royal Lytham and St. Annes. The last two times the championship was held there, Ballesteros won.

Several years ago, while in the throes of another slump, Ballesteros was asked the secret of golf. "To forget," he said. If he emerges triumphant from this slide, perhaps it will be because he learned that the secret isn't to forget, but to remember.