This week’s 90th hosting of the Masters is a special double Seve Ballesteros celebration.
Firstly, it was on April 9th, 1957 in Pedrena, Spain one of golf’s more charismatic golfers was born, so on the opening day of this year’s Masters Seve would have been aged 69 though sadly passing 15 years ago in 2011, aged just 54.
Seve became one of the sport’s leading figures from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. A member of a gifted golfing family, he won 90 international tournaments in his career, including five major championships between 1979 and 1988; The Open Championship three times and the Masters Tournament twice in 1980 and 1983.
DOUBLE @SeveBallesteros CELEBRATION THIS YEAR’S @TheMasters …
Tomorrow – April 9th – is Seve’s birthday. He would have been aged 69.
And this week also being remembered of a special Seve related @Nike moment 40-years ago at 1986 Masters
Read: https://t.co/e9S3TrfAQ1… pic.twitter.com/OZW3pxKHpa
— Fatiha (@TOURMISS) April 8, 2026
He gained attention in the golfing world in 1976, when at the age of 19, he finished second at The Open. He played a leading role in the re-emergence of European golf, helping the European Ryder Cup team to five wins both as a player and captain.
A World No. 1 Ballesteros won what still is a record 50 European Tour titles. He won at least one European Tour title for 17 consecutive years between 1976 and 1992. His final victory was so appropriate in capturing the 1995 Peugeot Spanish Open.
This year’s Masters is also doubly special as it also marks 40 years on from one of golf’s most distinctive and quietly memorable moments, Nike is marking the anniversary of Seve Ballesteros’ improvised ‘Nike Double Swoosh’ visor at The Masters in 1986.
A limited number of Nike visors, inspired by the original, are being released to commemorate an event that embodies one of those small but telling details that captured the spirit of the Spanish golf legend — instinct and creativity on the biggest stage in golf.
On Saturday and Sunday at Augusta National that year, Ballesteros arrived on the first tee wearing a white visor bearing two Nike swooshes — an unusual sight at a time when Nike had only just entered professional golf.
Ballesteros had already won the Masters twice, in 1980 and 1983, and had recently become Nike’s first golf ambassador. On the first two days of the 1986 Masters, he wore a visor he had bought in the pro shop, but on the weekend that changed. Seve cut two Nike labels from his shirts and fixed them over the visor’s logo, and just like that, the Double Swoosh visor was born. In some pictures, you can still see a small “M” beneath the swooshes, a detail that reflects the improvised nature of the moment.
Ballesteros would go on to carry a three-shot lead on the back nine during one of the most dramatic Sundays in Masters history, before ultimately being overtaken by Jack Nicklaus during his historic sixth Masters victory.
“Dad always understood the moment and was very creative,” said his son Javier, president of the Seve Ballesteros Foundation. “Nike had just signed him and he wanted to represent them properly, especially knowing he would be in contention on the weekend. There wasn’t a visor ready, so he simply created one himself. That was Dad — instinctive and creative. Forty years later, it’s still a special memory, not just because of the visor, but because of how he approached everything.”
The image of Ballesteros leading the Masters, wearing a visor he had improvised himself, became part of golfing folklor
