By Will Pearson, europeantour.com
in Crans Montana
Twenty-two years ago, Severiano Ballesteros produced one of the most incredible recovery shots in European Tour history at Crans-sur-Sierre Golf Club.
Having already won a trio of titles at the Swiss Alpine venue and achieved legendary status as one of the finest players in the annals of European golf, the Spaniard stepped on to the 18th tee in 1993 in need of a birdie to be in with any hope of catching Englishman Barry Lane.
Fiercely determined as ever, Seve gave his drive the beans but watched on in horror as his ball sailed long and right, coming to rest just five feet from an eight-foot high wall standing between his ball, a swimming pool and the green, some 130 yards away, with only the smallest of gaps to be seen between the wall and a string of branches.
After a lengthy discussion with caddie Billy Foster, who desperately pleaded with his employer to take his medicine and chip out sideways, Seve stuck to his trademark aggressive guns, laid the face of his sand wedge wide open and fired the ball almost vertically up over the wall, but beneath the tree limbs.
Incredibly, given the Pedrena native's proximity to the wall, the ball reaches the edge of the green and, even more amazingly, Seve then chips in for the birdie he was looking for all along.
Described by Foster as "the best shot I've ever seen", Seve was later asked why he went for such a risky shot, to which he replied, simply: "I just like to keep going forward."
As it turns out, the birdie still didn't prove enough, as Lane triumphed by a stroke, but the shot instantly went down as one of the greatest bits of scrambling ever seen in golf - eternalised in stone now at the very spot where Crans-sur-Sierre witnessed another bit of Ballesteros brilliance.
