Seve Ballesteros – a legend on and off the golf course

To Ian
Yes, I actually saw about that event on sky news, but did not pay enough attention, now I regret it, Steve was ended legend, RIP.

I have had cancer and know that there were days that I simply could not ‘fight’. There were other days when I felt that there was a way forward even it it was simply to accept the treatment offered me. If a positive outlook and fighting the battle gives patients a way of getting through, that is one thing and I applaud it. It is another when the conceptual elements in the fighting spirit message transmits itself to people’s sense of failure and all that goes with that.

But most importantly my thoughts are with Steve Ballesteros’s family and my admiration for him is huge.

Hi Harpal,

I read your note regards Seve with interest, are you aware that that we (TheSocialGolfer.com) are currently running a project with one of our members Trevor Sandford – he is embarking on a journey around the M25, playing a different course at each junction in August, all in aid of Cancer Research. We would love your help with this, especially in light of the sdad news over the weekend!

Hope to hear from you.

Ian

Another legend that has left us… a sad day

R.I.P Seve you are a legend amigo !

Oh Clare honey until you have had cancer you have no idea what the word BATTLE means and to FIGHT each day through treatment of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and surgery, this how it is you battle to get back to the person you were before the cancer came , you fight to stay positive every day of your life and i do that every day not just for me but for all the people that have supported me in my journey with breast cancer xxxxx

one of the Greats of our time!May he rest in peace.

very sad you will be missed very much god bless

Yes, he was indeed, a wonderful man and it great that you honour him But shame that your message holds that his disease was a ‘battle’ and that he ‘lost the fight’. This kind of language simply perpetuates the sense of separation between the man, his body and the disease – as if it was ‘other’; distancing ourselves from what so many people go through as if it were something we did to get cancer and something we didn’t do to erase it. So, most importantly, there is a sense that Steve Ballesteros has ‘failed’ because he didn’t win the so called ‘battle’. This sense of failure when someone dies of cancer, is everywhere, (just read the daily obits) not least in real life cancer patients who I had the privilege of working with, and often financed by you! Patients and their relatives reiterated this sense of failure when death was inevitable – they hadn’t apparently, fought hard enough, because if it is true that fighting cures, then death is surely the patients’ fault. Perhaps the best place to start to change this pernicious message is at the Cancer Research UK?