241 Pizza

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It was heartening to hear news this week that Severiano Ballesteros was conscious and able to speak to his family as he continues his recovery in a Madrid hospital after three operations to remove a brain tumour. It does not take too much reading between the lines, however, to realise that he is not yet out of the woods.

Everyone you speak to, it seems, has a favourite Seve story. Lee Westwood, for one, recalls a time when the five-times major champion gave him an impromptu bunker lesson with a five-iron, splashing the ball out and landing it softly on the green as if he had used one of the 60-degree wedges favoured by today's pampered professionals.

And when it was announced last week that the Royal Trophy - a team competition between Europe and Asia that Seve helped to establish - would go ahead as planned in January, it brought to mind a time in Bangkok two years ago when he captained a Europe side including Westwood and Darren Clarke to a second successive victory.

Passionate as ever, he spoke that week of preparing to join the Champions Tour in the United States later that year, after he had turned 50. What he did not wish to discuss, however, was the arthritis in his back that had so curtailed his game in recent years - and boy did he let you know it.

"Don't ask me about my back," he snapped, eyes flashing, in response to a question from a colleague from an Irish paper. "The back's fine. Forget the back. Ask me something else."

Imagine our slight dismay, then, when a day later we two journos were in a lift in the city centre hotel in which we were staying when the doors opened and the man himself squeezed in to the cramped space. After politely greeting each other there was a slightly embarrassed silence before Seve turned to the chap he had savaged, smiled that winning smile of his, and asked, "How's the back?" It was priceless.

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One man making waves in the European game is Alvaro Quiros, the longest hitter on tour and winner of the recent Portugal Masters - a victory he dedicated incidentally to Ballesteros, his countryman and inspiration.

Not only does the 25-year-old Spaniard hit the ball a country mile, he also has the game's widest smile.

Watching him practising at the HSBC Championship in Shanghai earlier his week was something to behold as he could not resist his urge to entertain.

Greeting everybody on the practice range and ready to share a joke with all and sundry, it was no coincidence that his end of the range was the noisiest and the most fun. Egged on, he treated Sergio Garcia, Camilo Villegas, Pablo Larrazabal and anyone passing by to an extraordinary display of hitting, before he wandered off to talk to Henrik Stenson, no mean striker of the ball himself.

At that point Villegas, who had been practising alongside him but had wisely kept the driver in the bag, called across to Fanny Sunesson, Stenson's caddie: "Fanny, keep him there for a while so that I can hit some drives and get out of here," he said. It summed up the mood perfectly.

Tiger Woods has the ability to make other players stop and watch. Quiros has that too.

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Hero of the week

Robert Karlsson, for the wry smile he gave Paul Casey after being teased that he was no longer officially the European No 1, four days after sealing the Vardon Trophy for the tour's leading player at the Volvo Masters. "You're back to nought now," he was told in Shanghai. "You've got to start all over again."

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The week in 60 seconds

Out with the old, in with the new. The curtain comes down on the 2008 European Tour season at Valderrama on Sunday and goes up again four days later as the 2009 season gets under way at the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai.