European Tour Logo to Honor Seve Ballesteros

(Note: The following article was originally published by the author for The Golf Writers.) Last Saturday the golfing world lost an icon as Seve Ballesteros — one of the most famous and talented professional European golfers of all time — succombed to his battle with brain cancer.  While multiple professionals, organizations, and the PGA Tour have offered their own tributes to this golfing legend, the European Tour will now honor Seve by designing a new logo commemorating his career.

According to a recent article by Bernie Maguire for the Scotsman, the European Tour’s logo was already recently changed in 2009 to commemorate the life and career of another great — Harry Vardon — and to coincide with the Race to Dubai series of that season.  The proposed photo that will eventually become the European Tour’s new logo is that of Seve Ballesteros pumping his fist towards the sky after winning the Open Championship at St. Andrews in 1984. 

Many professionals are voicing their opinions and support for this proposed logo change, including Paul Lawrie, another former Open winner.

“I absolutely support the idea (of changing it],” the Scot told reporters yesterday.  “Seve is the reason why we are playing on the European Tour, and everyone would have that opinion, so I fully agree with that.  Of course, it’s not for me to tell the Tour what to do. The current logo is a nice logo and it’s been very well done.

“But everyone knows and agrees that Seve was the player that really started it all for the European Tour. He was the difference. We shouldn’t be changing the logo just because he’s gone but that’s always been the case so maybe it could have been a Seve logo from the word go.” 

The original “muse” for the current European Tour logo, Harry Vardon is also commemorated by having his name attached to the Open Championship trophy, which Vardon himself won last in 1914.  Supporters of the proposed change to have Seve replace Vardon’s image also suggest that Ballesteros should have been the original choice all along dating from his retirement.  The obivous counter arguement is that the Vardon image depicts golfing greatness from as early a time period as possible, whereas Seve is certainly more recent.  However, this argument could stretch back even further to Old Tom Morris, should one feel so inclined.

Timelines for the proposed logo change to an image of Seve remain up in the air as of the time of this writing.