"But it remains a great sadness that the proud Spaniard and the planet's biggest golf-playing nation never found more common ground when, in so many ways, they were made for each other."

John Huggan laments Seve's absence from next week's Open and America's view of the great man:

That the U.S. does not generally join the rest of us in recognizing the peerless charisma of the señor from Pedrena, a small fishing village on Spain's windswept northern coast, is surely the greatest tragedy of Seve's professional life. It has always been hard for an American audience reared on the lazy stereotypes of wild driving, shots from parking lots and wars with authority in the shape of the unyielding Deane Beman's PGA Tour to appreciate fully Ballesteros' greatness.

There were faults on both sides, though. Looking back, Seve perhaps took too much obvious pleasure from beating Uncle Sam's nephews in more than one Ryder Cup for things to be any other way. But it remains a great sadness that the proud Spaniard and the planet's biggest golf-playing nation never found more common ground when, in so many ways, they were made for each other.