"Pure Seve,” said Bernard Gallacher, the former captain of Europe’s Ryder Cup team. He had just witnessed from close quarters a rare example of creative strokeplay in an age of calculating golf, brought off against all odds by Sergio Garcia, Severiano Ballesteros’s countryman, and a young man who has long been heralded as the successor to Ballesteros as golf’s greatest shot-maker and buccaneer.

It came on Friday morning, and it was indeed “pure Seve” as two awful shots were redeemed by the near-impossible. Garcia pulled his tee shot into the rough and shanked his second with a nine iron into wild vegetation short of the green. So deeply buried was Garcia’s ball that his caddie asked spectators where it was when he was within a yard of it.

When Garcia arrived, the prospect was fearsome. Twenty yards ahead of his ball lay a deep bunker. Behind the bunker, a slope of rough grass descended to the green, with the hole cut close to the edge.

The safe, percentage play was obvious. Just get the ball on the green, perhaps 20 feet past the hole, take your medicine and accept a bogey five. Garcia took little time about it. He dug deep after the ball with his wedge and the ball escaped its prison, flying over the bunker and landing inches beyond the sand on the top of the slope. From there, it trickled down to the green and made its way down to the hole, coming to rest no more than a foot away.

After his round, Garcia rather spoilt it by admitting that he hadn’t intended to be quite so clever. “I was trying to get it to 10 or 12 feet,” he said, “but the club got tangled in high grass.”

After that semi-fluke, Garcia was workmanlike and efficient, thoroughly modern, but for one moment he had unwittingly reminded us of what we lost when the greatest wizard of the links, the man driven by his will to win and desire to please, lost the power to summon miracles.

Ballesteros himself came to Carnoustie earlier in the week, but only to say goodbye.

It was sad and premature, with intimations of mortality. Thirty-three years as a professional golfer may seem a lot, but it is much less than a full working life. They have taken their toll, but it must have been hard for a man so proud to finally accept that his defining brilliance has long been extinguished. The eyes of the most charismatic player in the game in the years between Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods no longer burn. He appears a little shrunken, the sealskin sleekness of his hair and the stunning handsomeness of his face have gone. He seems older than his age, 50.

We will remember the irresistible youth. Ballesteros played his first Open at Carnoustie in 1975.

He was 18, suffering with an injured foot and missed the cut. His real arrival, and the announcement of his mercurial ability, came in the following Open at Royal Birkdale. Ballesteros led the field going into the final round, attacked the course and almost perished. Like so many before or since, it seemed that the thought of winning had overwhelmed him. Not at all. He continued to go for broke and played the final six holes in five under par to finish tied for second to Johnny Miller.

But it was the chip shot he played to the 18th green that showed that he was not merely a precocious and excellent golfer, but one with gifts bordering on the supernatural.

His ball lay to the right of the green on hard ground, where the grass had been burnt brown and sparse in that exceptional summer. Two bunkers were in front of him and the hole was close behind them. There seemed no way by which he might get close to secure second place. But after surveying the ground, he found one. He played the ball from a bare lie on to a sandy path between the bunkers. From there it meandered down towards the hole, rather in the way that Garcia’s ball did on Friday.

Some thought that Ballesteros had mis-hit his wonder shot, that it was just a piece of luck. But John Jacobs, the great teacher of golf, was not among them. “That shot alone convinced me that Seve was a genius,” Jacobs said. “There wasn’t another man in the field who would have attempted it.” Indeed, precious few would have imagined it; and none of them would have pulled it off.

He duly claimed his second prize, and the following week Ballesteros won the Dutch Open, the first of his 50 victories on the European Tour. Soon afterwards, he won the Lancome Trophy in Paris. On the final day, he played with the great Palmer, who had a four-stroke lead at the turn. Ballesteros had four birdies in six holes and won. He feared nobody.

Ballesteros came among us to dispense his unique brand of magic when he was most needed. Golf had become more than ever a game of mechanics, of swing-theories, technology, risk-assessment and psychology. Winning at Carnoustie today, as elsewhere on other days, will be all about efficiency and the avoidance of error. Winning for Ballesteros was all about being able to impose his will, taking risks, going for glory and damn the consequences.

The son of a small-time farmer and fisherman, he learnt to play in the northwest corner of Spain with a cut-down three iron. He hit balls in the farmyard and on the beach, as well as in the farmhouse basement, bashing balls at a curtain draped over a beam.

He emerged from this unorthodox upbringing with a marvel-lous, slashing long game, the best short-game in the world, and a pride that allowed no compromises. To survive in professional golf with such an approach is terribly difficult, but to succeed, to dominate tournaments and go on to win major championships, is close to impossible. Before the second world war, Walter Hagen managed it. After the war, Ballesteros, which makes two in a century.

Everyone who watched him will hold some special memory. It might be the time he hit a three-wood 240 yards from a bunker in his 1983 Ryder Cup singles match against Fuzzy Zoeller to win the final hole and halve the match. Jack Nicklaus, the US captain, described it as the best shot he had ever seen, which is some compliment.

Or it might well be a shot from the woods or the sight of Ballesteros in a practice bunker knocking a succession of three-iron shots close to the flag. He always loved the club he first used, and could do just about anything with it.

Tiger Woods cherishes such an experience. “Seve is probably the most creative player who has ever played the game,” Woods said in response to Ballesteros’s retirement. “I’ve never seen anyone with a better short game. I’ve been lucky enough to pick his brains on several occasions around the greens, watching him hit shot after shot after shot and have him explain how he did it and why he did it. He wasa genius. We’re certainly going to miss him.”

There are still a few among the current crop of utilitarians who have something of Ballesteros’s spirit and skill in them. Woods himself will occasionally be forced into risks, to show what he can do, and Garcia, when forced to, can produce an astounding trick or two. But for the transcendent thrill of pure attacking golf, Ballesteros was the nonpareil.

Master Seve

— Severiano Ballesteros first came to prominence in 1976 when, as a 19-year-old, he pushed Johnny Miller all the way in The Open

— Won five majors, The Open (1979, 1984 and 1988) and The Masters (1980 and 1983)

— He won his first European Tour event in 1976 and his last in 1995

— He has won 49 European Tour events - more than anybody else

— He won 91 tournaments worldwide

— Ballesteros played in eight Ryder Cup teams and was captain in 1997 when the contest was played at Valderrama in Spain