Seve Ballesteros is one of the greatest golfers to have ever graced the game.
Ballesteros possessed the most magical short game, and his powers of recovery were unmatched by few, if any at all.
However, the five-time major champion endured plenty of fall-outs throughout his time in the professional game.
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Ballesteros was at loggerheads with the PGA Tour at certain times throughout his glorious career.
Seve Ballesteros was admired by his fellow PGA Tour players for his magical, imaginative touch around the greens.
Photo by Alain MINGAM/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
However, there were plenty of golfers who quite simply never saw eye to eye with the man from Pedrena, Spain.
Seve, who sadly passed away in 2011, was one of the biggest names in the professional game in the mid-1980s.
However, that clearly didn’t give him a free pass to do whatever he liked.
Why Seve Ballesteros was banned by the PGA Tour for an entire season
Back in 1985, Seve incurred the wrath of the PGA Tour.
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The Spaniard was very steadfast in his thinking and never backed down from confrontation.
This caused him a big problem 40 years ago.
In 1985, Seve played just nine events on the PGA Tour – six short of the required 15.
The PGA Tour acted swiftly and revoked the Spaniard’s membership for the following season.
In 1986, Ballesteros was the world’s number one golfer for 20 weeks, so it was a big call from the PGA Tour at the time.
Interestingly, his ban from the PGA Tour didn’t affect his golf one little bit, as he went on to win six times on the European Tour that year.
Why Seve Ballesteros played one PGA Tour event in 1986 despite his ban
He was allowed to play one tournament outside of the four majors – the USF&G Classic.
Photo credit should read ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP via Getty Images
That was due to the fact that he won that event in 1985, so was given special dispensation to return and defend his crown.
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The ironic thing about the whole situation was that it was actually Ballesteros who campaigned for the number of events required to keep a PGA Tour card to be increased to 15 in 1984.
However, that quite clearly backfired on him in 1986, when he had to dedicate most of his time to playing in Europe.
At the time, Seve Ballesteros was a four-time major champion, and he went on to win just one more major at the Open Championship in 1988.
If he hadn’t been banned from playing on the PGA Tour for the entire 1986 season, would he have been better placed to win more majors in the United States that year? Perhaps, but nobody will ever know for sure.
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