Peter Corrigan: Why Seve rages against dying of the light

Students of the life and times of Seve Ballesteros will be bracing themselves for another eruption of his smouldering sense of grievance this week – and fearful that this will finally bring an end to the career of Europe's finest and most exciting golfer.

When the tournament committee, made up of 15 leading players, meets in Germany on Wednesday the Spaniard's latest angry joust with officialdom over a penalty point for slow play in the Italian Open last weekend will be high on the agenda and the indications are that they will feel obliged to make an example and impose a fine.

The amount will be immaterial because Ballesteros would certainly not pay it and, not for the first time in his 29 years in top golf, tumult would ensue and the subsequent chain of events would carry the grim potential of his suspension from the European Tour.

He has parted company from the Tour before, in 1981, but that was his own decision and he was then at the height of his magical powers. To be thrown out now, when his struggles to recapture his form are heading for yet another forlorn summer, would have a shattering effect on his determination to carry on.

That his fellow players would have been instrumental in punishing him would, for him, make it far more intolerable. He would find it difficult ever to play with them again. He doesn't so much bear a grudge as be borne by it. They should know that better than anyone so we must hope they are aware that their deliberations on Wednesday carry a mighty responsibility.

Some of them have already criticised him for the incident in the third round in Italy when he was penalised one shot for slow play. His playing partner duly added it to the scorecard but Ballesteros altered the scorecard to remove the penalty and was disqualified; as he knew he would be. No game is more rigidly regulated than golf and no sportsman is more zealously rule-conscious than the golfer, so there was no question of anyone condoning what he did.

They may be able to ignore his rantings at the authorities whom he described as the "mafia" and who were accused of deliberately persecuting him. He is no more cautious with his mouth than he is with his driver. But overlooking a direct contravention of the rules is impossible. No one has emphasised this more firmly at The Belfry over the past week than Bernhard Langer, who began his professional career at the same time as Ballesteros and, although of an entirely different character, would always tend to be sympathetic.

But Langer can't see an acceptable reason for Ballesteros's behaviour. There are rules and they must be obeyed by everyone. Golf would cease to function at the slightest sign of anarchy.

It doesn't help that slow play has long been a curse in golf and in the professional game particularly – Langer himself is no streak of lightning around the course – and everyone, players especially, are determined to see it stamped out.

The system of an escalating scale of fines and then a deduction of a shot is being enforced on those who take too long over playing and Ballesteros happened to fall foul of the stop-watch on the 16th in Brescia for the second time in the round. He didn't like it, nobody does. Even among club golfers, accusations of slow play cause more violent arguments than any other subject.

It is ironical that a man whose career has been anything but a dawdle should have been embroiled in a row about slow play and if you had to nominate a player likely to be caught you'd think of 50 names before Ballesteros.

Perhaps it needed the capture of a famous scalp to bang home the determination of the anti-slow-play campaign. David Dixon, first round leader in the Benson & Hedges event at The Belfry on Thursday, was fined £1,000 for taking 51 seconds over a putt. The fact that he had such a famous fellow transgressor might have been some consolation.

There are those who would welcome Seve's retirement, no matter how it came about, because they are embarrassed to see him flailing away to no avail week after week. Padraig Harrington, one of the brightest of the modern crop and a worshipper of Ballesteros from childhood, asked: "Why can't he sit back and bask in his achievements? Why is he fighting everybody?" Good questions, but they betray a lack of knowledge of the background against which his hero fashioned one of the most remarkable sporting careers of the last 25 years.

Middle age can't be blamed for making him petulant and irascible. Those were among the qualities he brought with him when he became a professional at the age of 16. He was obsessed with the game and intensely irritated when his play fell short of the standards he set himself. But although he was a club-thrower and bag-kicker when things went wrong, his main expression of anger was taken out on the practice ground and the putting greens. He wanted, expected, to hole every putt and place every approach shot stone dead. He still does and therein lies the foundation of his general dissatisfaction with failure of any sort.

Neither has his aggressive style altered through the years. He first stepped into the worldwide limelight at 19 when he came joint-second with Jack Nicklaus to Johnny Miller in the 1976 Open at Royal Birkdale. Miller said that the youngster might have won had he not blazed away at every shot. Ballesteros retorted that there would be plenty of time to be careful when he was older. That time has yet to come, apparently.

After winning The Open in 1979 and the 1980 US Masters before he was 23, he met his first big controversy when he was seven minutes late for his second round tee-off time in the 1980 US Open. He was disqualified and slated on both sides of the Atlantic. Everyone was blamed until he admitted it was his responsibility. The following year he became involved in a violent argument with the European Tour about appearance money.

He felt he was entitled to it; they didn't. He resigned from the Tour and played in Japan and the US. He eventually made peace but another mix-up saw him excluded from the 1981 Ryder Cup team which was murdered at Walton Heath. He went on to play the biggest role of all in creating a European team capable of making the Ryder Cup an exciting contest. He won another Masters and two more Opens to make a massive contribution to the exploding popularity of golf.

Perhaps it would have been neater had he slipped gently from our sight but he doesn't want to do the things that ex- golfing heroes tend to do. He's designed courses but doesn't seem all that bothered. He's not interested in business or even gardening. He just wants to play golf and experience the thrill of winning again. He can't enjoy missing cut after cut but he is prepared to endure it while he chases new success.

You can't separate a man from his own nature. If Seve wasn't the way he is he wouldn't have been able to give us so much. Even now, most of us would prefer to watch him on a bad day than all the others playing their Sunday best.

He remains a fighter and sometimes he fights when he should back off. The players who sit in judgement on him this week should consider that there is nothing to be gained from taking the matter further and endangering the dreams of a much-loved man. Golf will be the bigger sufferer if that happens.