we were unique.

—“¡Ya era hora, abuelo! ¡Estamos los tres esperándote!”.

The three stand up when the fourth friend arrives with the bag of sticks on the back.They receive it with sound hugs and laughs of happiness.It is a Tuesday in May at six in the afternoon and Pepín Rivero enters the Casa Club del CampINDUKERN GROUP.Once the practice is over, it is the time for a special reunion.Antonio Garrido, José María Cañizares and Manuel Piñero have standing.Next to Pepín they are more than four colleagues.They are the players who gave the Spanish golf in the seventies and eighties and who lived in the first person the phenomenon of Severiano Ballesteros.They are the true armed.

Pepín Rivero is called "grandfather" but is the youngest of the four.The jokes continue while they pose for the photographer.Then they choose a sofa with the sea in the background.Garrido is sheltered.Cañi lights a marlboro.The waiter serves beer in wide glasses.The four friends are happy to meet again and remember so many stories.But ... how did everything start?

Antonio Garrido.We have not spent so many years that we no longer remember.Starting to play golf went to us very difficult.You couldn't play.They didn't leave us.We had to do it in secret, at night or in the morning very soon.And if they saw us, they threw us out.It was prohibited because yes, because it was then.I am the penultimate of seven brothers, children of a mason.Each one took home what he could.Today everything is facilities.

José María Cañizares.My father was also a mason, and also with seven children, I the fourth.We lived in Aravaca [Madrid], near the field club.We four began as caddies because we came from humble families fighting to survive.Golf was our survival.We had to bring money home for purchase.As Antonio says, they didn't let us play.Forbidden.They were the rules.There was no democracy, but Francoism.As we had not known anything else, we had to accept it.

Manuel Piñero.Spain was as it was and cannot be compared.We had to make a living at a very early age, between nine and 11 years.At home there were no resources.And hunger made us golfers.My father worked in Badajoz on a pig farm and we came to Madrid because we had nothing.You had to get money like it was and I was fortunate to be in a golf course.My grandmother took me to tennis a day to work as a collect, but before we went through the field club.The Caddie Master, who was Angel Nieto's father -in -law, said: "Let him need children."And there I stayed.We didn't even know what this sport was.We were children who worked.That of the university was for others.But I don't keep any resentment or negative feeling at that time.It was the one that had to live.

Pepín Rivero.To study?The main thing was to bring a money home.I started in golf without having any idea, just to help my family to eat.I win everyone: I am the fifth of 12 brothers.My father was a fat brush painter.I remember a divine childhood.We had fun with anything.My father worked as an animal and the children helped.With 14 years they let me play golf, although I had to be early, at Puerta de Hierro.

CañizaresThe golf was then very elitist.

PiñeroBut not only golf, tennis, skiing, candle ... In Spain, playing was elite.Less football, run ... Not even cycling.You needed a dad to buy you the bike ... I remember Antonio to do the north tour in a Vespa, with her sticks on the motorcycle, from Madrid to A Coruña, Gijón, Bilbao, San Sebastián ...

Graceful.Exactly.Because there was no other way to do it.We had to leave in front somehow.Some in Vespa and others in a six hundred.

PiñeroManolo Montes, always, with an 850. We were four, with the golf sticks, the suitcases, in an 850, from Madrid to A Coruña, which was not the highway now, it took you 12 hours ... on my first trip we stoppedIn a pension full of bed bug.We couldn't sleep.That was that time.

Graceful.It was unthinkable what we did.We were making our way, the world taught us, and so we are here.

CañizaresI bought my first sticks, used, for 2,000 pesetas.All that tanned us, he taught us to value everything.You become much firmer, more worker, more responsible.No one had educated us to do what we were doing, but life and circumstances were teaching us how to win the bread.We had a bad time.

Rivero.That made us more united, learn to suffer together.The Camareadería of the Grupo Vino because at that time we played golf and little else.When we finished, we got together for a game of the mus, chat ... the kids of today end and that if the gym, that if the psychologist, the computer, the mobile ... they do not have time to speak.

CañizaresAlso for the thing of the language, to understand us abroad.Today any child knows English.We did not know.We went out to dinner and asked for the letter without knowing.It wasn't what you wanted and you had to eat it.Also sacrificing the family.I have not seen my children spend a bad night, I have not seen them grow.

PiñeroWe were self -taught in everything.We went to work, we were golf workers.And we didn't even know the big stars rather than in some photo.Garrido made Caddie Jack Nicklaus in the year 65 in the World Cup.It was the first time I saw players of that level.For us, they were gods!Today, for young people Tiger Woods are someone familiar, they talk about him or Sergio García as if they were with them every day.

CañizaresWe are based on looking among us, to talk, help us, to turn our game around ...

PiñeroNot having resources made very intuitive, tremendously creative players, with a strong personality.Each of us, with our style, we knew how to master the game, and nobody taught us that, but we had created it ourselves.That is what gave us that security to, when we were going to compete, know what we had to do.No one had to tell us anything.Today the kids are much more dependent.I like people who are unique, who are themselves, and there are not many of those.We were, we were unique.We live a fantastic era, with a genius like Seve, an era in Europe that will not be repeated: Nick Fald, Ian Woosnam, Sandy Lyle, Langer, Seve, Chema Olazábal ... The figure of the Caddie player has ended, fortunately.Today children can choose.For us as children there was no choice.

CañizaresThus we learned the golf values.We live them.

PiñeroGolf values still exist, despite the tremendous competition that commercial brands are doing.Now, when a very first -level player commits a failure and can be thrown out of the tournament [refers to Tiger and illegal sudden in the masters], he looks not only if he has committed an infraction, but the audience rates, the millions... commercial houses send more than the Royal and Ancient and the USGA, and that in our time was not so.There was not so much economic power behind.

Piñero

THE COUNTRY.When and how did they become the Navy?

Graceful.In 77. We were the Navy!The Spanish golfers, not the tennis players!We won it for what we did that season.

PiñeroHistoricalOf the first nine tournaments of the European circuit, six are won Spanish [two Garridos, Seve, Piñero, Manuel Ramos and Ángel Gallardo].And Peter Dobereiner, a fantastic journalist we called Don Quixote as he was, baptized us: the invincible Navy.Thanks to this, that year the Ryder Cup was changed.Jack Nicklaus said that if he did not join the golfers of continental Europe, referring to the Spaniards, the Ryder would die.There were Americans who did not want to come to Europe because there was no competition, they always won, and the regulation was changed.Dobereiner asked me: "When are you going to stop winning tournaments?"I replied: "When you return us Gibraltar."

Graceful.There was a player, Salvador Valbuena, who died very young, who deserves to remember him.

PiñeroI joined the famous Navy a little later.Seve, by age, was more than my fifth.He was the one who truly promoted the European circuit.He lifted Europe.Apart from being a great player, he had a special race and heart.Seve gave everything in the golf course.A week I stopped playing the PGA for going to my daughter's communion and threw my anger.Also when I took a week on vacation shortly before an Ryder.It was pure passion.

CañizaresSomeone superior.If there was a contract in Spain, it was for number one.You felt healthy jealousy.He sold much easier.He changed to go to play anywhere for free.That helped us.

Graceful.It was a Nadal for us.And someone very particular.It was unique, but also unique for him.I can't say he helped me.The authentic companion has been Manolito Piñero.

PiñeroSeve made us feel important.Instead of looking at Nicklaus or Tom Watson, we looked at him.He ended European fear against America.As a person, his good heart sometimes was not reflected.I also had complicated moments with him, because I told him things he didn't like to hear.But he was very noble.In the Ryder of 85, in The Belfry, I always gave him the step upon arriving at the bridge of 18. He was waiting for me in the middle and lifted my fist.He was always faithful to himself.

Graceful.That is now very different.The love for golf is the same, but there is much less companionship.It is because of the damn money.The more money there is, the more problems there is in life.We had more humility.

Rivero.The difference is the time.These guys today would have made the same group.

PiñeroPlayers now feel more self -sufficient.Winning is even more difficult.In our time there were 30 players who could win a tournament.Today are 150. The people of the tail car have improved a lot.

CañizaresThe game was more intuitive.We created golf.Now everything is written.

PiñeroWe are surprising something else.When someone came to tell us something, he was someone of our level, and we listened to him.Today, I am amazed at listening to people who have never dropped from 80.People who have no idea what golf is.Nicklaus says that with today's material a player like Ben Hogan would not exist.And he is sad that a boy with 18 or 20 years should go to the psychologist.It is what we think.

Rivero.With today's material ... the balls do not stop the same.

PiñeroGolf was 75% technical and 25% physical, and today is 50 and 50. The player today has to be a good athlete.With our woods, the sweet stick of the stick, where you had to hit, was like a nail.Today is like a big glass.That allows the player to have more margin of error at the time of impact.In our time it had to be very precise, to have a very sharp technique.

Rivero.I believe that the ball has greatly influenced.There is nothing more to see the players' bag.Here we have the best player of the time with the iron one [points to Cañizares].With iron one and with the two.How many players do you see with the iron one and two in the bag?Practically anyone.

PiñeroAnd the Greens are different.The difference between the United States and Europe was abysmal.I was an aggressive kicker because in Europe the Greens were very slow and in the United States I needed three putts because it was long for two meters.

Graceful.I would like to see all the good today play like us, without measures.We had no references.

Rivero.Before the 400 meters holes seemed very long and now they plan to make them even three.But let's see with the total that was earned before and with which you win now.I don't think there is so much difference.That now they do much less blows than us, nothing.

PiñeroFour years ago, in Valderrama, Sergio García came home to dinner and asked me to show him the sticks of my time.They were in the garage.He takes the iron one and says: “Ostia!With this you played?Yes, and he was under par, huh?He was amazed.He did not understand.Spain had a luck of having a unique generation of players.

CañizaresAnd Spain cost nothing.On the contrary, it benefited a lot.

THE COUNTRY.What do you remember from the Ryder Cup?

CañizaresBefore the non -British European was out of place, of the team, he was like the guest, the poor.

PiñeroSeve was key.And he had an exceptional travel companion, Olazábal.It is that Spain has lived a golden age in golf.The bar is very high.That was not real, it was a mirage.What is now is more real in relation to the number of players in Spain, 350,000 licenses.

Graceful.Sergio García is going to win a big one.He is now the only one we have.

PiñeroÁlvaro Quirós had a spectacular projection and if he recovers from the injuries he can get it.Gonzalo Fernández-Coastaño too.

Rivero.The fan has expanded.I also see Rafael Cabrera, and beware of Larrazábal.

CañizaresWe are above our possibilities.You have to be patient.

PiñeroIn Spain I am very sad that our young people have nowhere to go, where to compete.I call the federations to stop looking at the navel and make a national circuit for young people.We know what it is to have to look for life.