In this video, we sit down with David Cannon, golf photographer and author of the new book 'Seve: His Life Through The Lens', to go through 8 incredible photos he has captured of Seve during his career and the story behind them all. David shares some great insight into what Seve was like to photograph and the relationship he had with the great man. We also learn about the new book and what it was like to go through the process of making this book, including getting access to some never-before-seen photos of Seve's family life away from the course.
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00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 - Yeah, number eight.
00:05 So, you know at Augusta, you're not allowed to run.
00:08 I was in my usual afternoon studio,
00:11 which is from behind the second shot into 13,
00:14 'cause the light's beautiful on that hole
00:16 and it's a lovely sunny afternoon.
00:19 And I saw Seve hit the shot.
00:22 You know, sometimes you look at a player
00:24 and you see the body action afterwards.
00:26 And I thought, hmm, there's a chance
00:27 that's gone into the water.
00:28 And that year, they let the water run fairly shallow.
00:33 But some years it's deep.
00:35 And this year it was particularly shallow.
00:37 So there was a chance of people playing out of the water.
00:39 And I just thought, there's just a chance
00:41 that he's got in this water.
00:42 So, you know, doing my Olympic walk, as I call it.
00:46 And I was lucky enough to get across the crossing on 14,
00:49 'cause that's the other thing,
00:50 not where outside the ropes at Augusta.
00:52 You can't go inside the ropes.
00:54 So you can often get caught at spectator crossings
00:57 'cause players coming through.
00:58 But luckily, right in, got up the back of the grandstands.
01:02 We have a, you know, you can get to the back of the bleachers
01:06 as they call them in America
01:08 through access at the back for media.
01:11 Got there at the top, absolutely out of breath,
01:13 sweating like a pig.
01:15 And, you know, to see Seve sitting on the bank
01:18 getting his shoes and socks off,
01:19 I think just, you couldn't have written it, really.
01:22 You look at that very, very closely at that sequence.
01:25 Hawkeyes will notice that near the end of it,
01:28 you'll just see the ball descending,
01:30 rather than it's not coming out,
01:32 but it didn't go forward.
01:33 It went up, but not forward, sadly.
01:36 So it came back at his feet
01:37 and I think he had to drop the next one out.
01:39 What a guy to watch, 'cause he'll take these shots on.
01:42 Probably this book would not have happened
01:45 without COVID and lockdown,
01:47 because I wouldn't have had the time to devote to it,
01:51 to get it done in such a short period of time.
01:54 And, you know, obviously I've remained friends with Carmen,
01:59 his ex-wife, but she's always been a really good friend.
02:04 And Javier, because he plays golf, he's met my son,
02:07 they got on quite well.
02:09 And yeah, we've kept in touch all the time.
02:13 You know, I've often had lunches in London
02:15 and stuff like this.
02:17 And, you know, 10th anniversary was coming up
02:20 of his passing and I just saw a chance,
02:24 an opportunity just to do a book
02:28 that would celebrate his career in pictures, basically.
02:32 And I would not have got this project off the ground
02:36 without A, the publishers getting interested,
02:39 and most of all, without the RNA
02:41 and then the European tour backing me.
02:43 So it's been done in three months
02:45 and I spent hours going through archives
02:49 and the Getty archive has been incredible
02:52 because we have got so many collections on there.
02:54 We've got Phil Sheldon's collections on there,
02:56 Peter Daisley, all the guys who were shooting
02:59 in the 70s and early 80s,
03:02 but I've got pictures that I've used in the book
03:06 and I've tried to use pictures from other photographers,
03:09 as much, you know, because I think the book
03:11 is about great images of Seve.
03:14 So we've dug into some other archives
03:16 and having the help of the RNA
03:18 and the European tour,
03:20 it's meant that we've been able to afford
03:22 to buy pictures in from outside.
03:24 And so hopefully it's going to give people
03:26 a full and lovely view into his life.
03:30 And another thing, of course, is the family
03:32 have given us access to some beautiful family shots.
03:35 I always said that Seve's smile
03:37 was the most magnetic smile I've ever seen in a subject.
03:41 And if you see these, when you see these family pictures,
03:44 which no one's seen other than the family up till now,
03:48 they shine, they literally light up the pages.
03:52 And yeah, what an amazing treat it is
03:55 to be able to use those pictures.
03:57 I've tried to do what I call a moment in time
03:59 in each chapter,
04:01 but they're basically my stories behind pictures,
04:05 which are quite fun, I hope, to make it interesting.
04:08 And then Robert's essays as well.
04:09 So there's some good reading in it as well.
04:11 It's not just pictures.
04:13 People loved him, bottom line,
04:15 that's the way I'd put it.
04:18 People love watching Seve
04:19 and they love the way he played the game of golf.
04:22 They love this passion.
04:23 They love everything about he gave to the game of golf.
04:27 And for me, that's the thing that shines so much.
04:32 That actually, we lost the '93 Ryder Cup,
04:36 but this was on Saturday morning.
04:39 And Seve hadn't been playing very well that year as a whole,
04:43 but again, he's teamed up with Ollie
04:45 and I think they won the two matches on the Friday
04:49 and this was the Saturday morning and they won again.
04:53 And for some reason,
04:55 Gallacher thought his back wasn't holding up
04:57 or Seve had said to him,
04:59 he's really struggling with his back
05:01 and he didn't play him in the afternoon.
05:03 And we lost by one point.
05:06 What can you take from that?
05:09 But the world will never know,
05:12 but that picture, I just love that picture
05:14 because the people in the background,
05:16 they hold the birdie at that moment.
05:18 Yeah, that was Seve.
05:19 That was the reaction you always got.
05:22 Yeah, the whole story is pretty amazing
05:24 because that tournament, put it into context,
05:26 he had just birdied, I think it was six holes in a row,
05:30 well, certainly from the 13th.
05:31 So 13, 14, 15, 16, five holes he'd birdied in a row.
05:35 And he'd got to within one shot of the lead
05:39 and he stands on the 18th tee,
05:41 which is to a slope that is really slopey fairway.
05:44 It's a really tough tee shot,
05:46 stay on the fairway anyway.
05:48 And sure enough, off to the right.
05:51 And I mean, I thought it was going to be out of bounds,
05:56 but it wasn't.
05:58 It was six foot from a concrete wall,
06:01 which surrounds the swimming pool in Crom.
06:04 And I went with him.
06:09 A lot of people just ignored it.
06:10 Even the TV crews ignored it
06:12 'cause they thought he's only going to chip this out.
06:15 And if you notice, there's not a TV camera in sight.
06:17 There's no video of this shot ever.
06:20 The only video of it is the ball landing
06:22 just short of the green.
06:23 But then he gets on his knees, he's snorting,
06:28 he's kicking the ground, as he does,
06:32 pointing to a gap like that.
06:34 And Billy Foster, his caddy, he told me,
06:38 well, he tells the story probably better than I do,
06:41 but there's a great little YouTube video
06:45 of what Billy said at the time.
06:46 He reckoned it was the size of a dinner plate,
06:50 the hole that Seve was aiming for.
06:53 And literally, he's almost on his knees,
06:56 he's down there, he's crouching.
06:57 Billy walks by me, he's got his bag,
07:00 he's been sent off.
07:01 You know, I'm going for this.
07:03 Billy's been trying to persuade him to chip out
07:05 for the last five minutes.
07:07 And sure enough, there's a big explosion
07:10 of pine needles and everything.
07:12 No, no, I was waiting for the ball
07:13 to hit the concrete wall and come towards me,
07:15 'cause the geometry that it was,
07:16 I thought I could be in quite a bit of danger here,
07:18 'cause the angles are,
07:20 so I was at a right angle to him.
07:22 And just waiting, it was that six second,
07:25 or whatever, one of the things I learned
07:26 from TV cameraman is that the ball is in the air
07:29 for six seconds, but they hit a full shot.
07:32 Basically, a tee shot, whatever shot it is,
07:34 roughly six seconds, the ball is in the air.
07:36 You could count, there's a little pause.
07:39 And then a big roar.
07:40 And you know, obviously he's got close to the green,
07:43 or even on the green.
07:44 So I run around and you see the ball's
07:45 just short of the green.
07:47 And unfortunately, I didn't get quite far enough
07:50 around the green before he's playing his third shot,
07:52 'cause I was playing catch up, basically.
07:55 And, you know, he chipped the damn thing in for a birdie.
07:58 Unfortunately, Barry Lane spoilt the story
08:01 about birding 17 and 18.
08:03 - He's a 16 and 17, and he didn't win, he lost by a shot.
08:07 But it's one of the most incredible golf shots I've ever seen.
08:11 You know, he was always fine with me.
08:13 You know, I had occasions when he'd let me
08:16 lie down behind him and shoo all the other photographers
08:18 off, literally.
08:20 So, you know, I had very, very good relationship with him.
08:24 Not by pushing myself at him,
08:26 but I think it was just mutual trust.
08:28 And, you know, 'cause I was around a lot following him.
08:32 I was still doing football at the time, so, you know,
08:35 I actually, when you look, I didn't do that many tournaments
08:39 that Seve played in.
08:41 I did the majors and the bigger ones,
08:43 but all the sort of regular European tour events,
08:46 I was usually being sent off to do football
08:48 at that stage of my career.
08:50 I remember those World Match plays so fondly.
08:54 Anyway, just, you know, I actually got a lovely picture
08:58 of him on the tee on the par five, the par three fifth.
09:02 And he put it in the bunker just left of the green.
09:06 And that bunker shot, you know,
09:09 bunker shots can be ordinary,
09:11 but it's very difficult to get what I call
09:15 nicely framed bunker shots, you know,
09:18 where the player's in the right,
09:19 the ball's up to the other side.
09:22 And so it fills the frame nicely, background's lovely.
09:26 I'm always very keen on backgrounds
09:28 to try and get as much out of focus.
09:30 So you really isolate the subject.
09:32 Golf, I keep on saying to people, you know,
09:34 golf is one of the best spectator sports
09:37 because you can get close to your heroes.
09:40 You know, you can be eight feet from Tiger Woods
09:44 playing a golf shot.
09:45 Name any other sport you can get so up close in person
09:50 with the great stars.
09:51 You can't really.
09:52 So even though you've got to walk a long way
09:54 and you've got to, you know, be clever where you wait,
09:57 this sort of thing, I think golf's the best sport.
10:00 It's the greatest partnership in Ryder Cup history.
10:03 No one will get close to what they,
10:05 they went up, what was it?
10:06 12 points out of 15 or whatever it is.
10:09 I think they've got in it in all their matches.
10:12 No one will touch that.
10:14 And if you actually look at Seve,
10:16 he won three points out of four with Manuel Paneiro
10:20 when he played with him in '85.
10:22 So Seve and fellow Spanish players,
10:25 we have incredibly strong chemistry, basically.
10:29 And, you know, from the word go,
10:31 the chemistry with '87 when Lazardell first played
10:34 and things like Oli holding that putt
10:36 and actually it was Saturday morning,
10:37 I think it was in '87
10:40 and Seve knocked it four and a half feet past,
10:42 you know, and then Oli hold it again.
10:44 And you just saw the sort of the chemistry between them
10:47 on the 18th screen.
10:48 And it was like, you know,
10:51 and that picture,
10:52 I was so lucky that jumping on the shoulders
10:55 because the Americans were playing at the same,
10:58 you know, around about the same moment that that happened.
11:01 And they did it once.
11:04 And I thought, damn, it's a bit of a messy picture
11:06 'cause the caddy was standing right behind him.
11:08 And the caddies sort of started walking on.
11:10 They were still standing in the same spot.
11:12 And then Oli did the same thing again.
11:15 And I got this lovely clean background.
11:17 So it was a much nicer picture,
11:18 but Seve hit his second shot.
11:20 If you look at it,
11:21 he's got a putter and Seve's got his nine, nine
11:23 or whatever it was, eight, nine.
11:25 And Keir Ireland's got these really slopey greens.
11:30 - Yeah.
11:30 - And you can't actually see the ball
11:32 on the green sometimes.
11:33 And he just see over the top.
11:35 And if he stood on his shoulders,
11:36 he could see where the ball was
11:37 and it was on the green, you know.
11:38 So that's all he was looking for.
11:40 I'd always, I said to Robert Green and Richard Simmons,
11:44 I said, look,
11:45 the only way to do these Seve instructions
11:48 is to try and do it at home.
11:50 Yeah, and he was happy to have us come to his home.
11:53 I think we had three articles to do on the instruction
11:56 and Seve gave us the morning basically to do it.
12:00 And it all went really well.
12:02 We had a good time doing it
12:04 'cause I tried to make it, you know, challenge him.
12:06 I always thought the best way to do the instruction
12:08 was to try and give him challenging shots,
12:11 bunker shots,
12:12 try and hold this or try and hit one that lands,
12:15 you know, with a nine iron,
12:16 try and play with a nine iron low at this sort of stuff.
12:18 And he was great.
12:19 Once you got him doing that, he was electric.
12:21 He'd just show off basically.
12:24 And so then we're having lunch in the clubhouse
12:28 and he just is chatting away.
12:29 And I said, Seve, you know,
12:31 one of the things I'd love to do is go to the beach
12:33 to see where you hit balls with a youngster.
12:36 You know, you want to go?
12:39 We go, it's afternoon.
12:40 (laughing)
12:41 And it was like, as easy as that.
12:43 It wasn't planned at all.
12:44 It was literally, and you know, five minutes later,
12:47 he comes out of the kitchen with a soup can
12:49 in the golf club.
12:51 He grabs a napkin from the table.
12:53 He said, go on, off we go into his Range Rover,
12:56 drive down to Somo beach, which is a beautiful beach.
13:00 And you know, we were lucky in every sense
13:02 because we got onto the beach and it was low tide.
13:04 So the tide's out.
13:05 So it's perfect basically.
13:07 And it's blowing 30 miles an hour, freezing cold wind.
13:11 It's February.
13:12 So it's early February.
13:13 So it's pretty cold in Northern Spain at that time of year.
13:16 But he was like a kid, literally.
13:18 And you know, he went off into the bushes
13:21 where he parked his car and came out with a stick.
13:24 And then he gets on his hands and knees
13:27 and he cuts the hole out with his soup can,
13:31 sticks the stick in, ties the napkin to the top.
13:34 This is my hole.
13:35 I said, I learned to putt for Augusta on this green.
13:39 You know, he said, 'cause it's so fast, rock hard sand.
13:43 And it was like billiard table basically.
13:46 So we did a few putts
13:47 and then he started hitting shots down nine iron
13:49 and then a three iron down the beach.
13:51 And amazing basically.
13:53 I couldn't, we couldn't believe our luck.
13:54 And he just let him hit shots basically.
13:56 I mean, the day was without a doubt
13:59 the best, most memorable day of my life basically
14:01 in golf photography.
14:03 The final putt, yeah.
14:04 I mean, what can I say about that?
14:08 It was, you have to be lucky in this game.
14:12 There's no question you have to be lucky.
14:14 And I actually, you know, he got that amazing par,
14:19 beautiful par on 17.
14:21 It's still one shot behind going up 18.
14:24 Basically he knew he had to birdie 18.
14:27 And the second shot he left 15 feet short of the hole.
14:31 And if you look at the video,
14:33 it's amazing how long that putt took to roll into that hole
14:37 'cause it literally, it was missing.
14:40 And it just hovered on the edge and then it fell in.
14:44 And of course, when you're photographing,
14:46 all you've got is just Seve in the camera.
14:49 You don't know if that ball's going in the hole.
14:50 So the only thing that's going to give you the clue
14:52 that that might be going in the hole is the crowd
14:55 or the player reacting.
14:57 And you know, he reacted in a massive way.
15:01 And luckily enough, I'd had a premonition
15:03 or whatever it was, you know, roller film,
15:05 36 pictures is all it was in those days.
15:08 You think you can shoot a thousand pictures
15:11 on something like that now with digital cameras.
15:13 We had 36 pictures to deal with.
15:16 A camera that runs at five, six frames a second.
15:19 You got about six seconds of ammunition, basically.
15:23 Luckily I had a fresh roll because, you know,
15:25 the best picture, the really nice picture,
15:27 the fist pump picture,
15:29 was very, very near the end of the sequence.
15:32 If you look at it on the, you know,
15:33 it was very close to the end.
15:35 And I think just after that, I ran out of film.
15:38 So I didn't actually manage to get any pictures
15:40 of him hugging his caddy and walking off the thing
15:42 because I've literally ran out of film.
15:43 So I'd say 1984 was, you know,
15:47 I don't like to think I peaked then,
15:49 but it was, I had two pictures that year.
15:53 There was that picture.
15:54 And then two weeks later at the Olympics in Los Angeles,
15:57 I got my famous picture of Carl Lewis,
15:59 the pan shot of him running, which those two pictures,
16:03 I mean, I can't, you can't quantify how much,
16:08 how many times they've been used
16:10 and what they've done for my career, really.
16:13 But certainly for me, that St. Andrews moment was,
16:17 that got me going as a golf photographer, well and truly.
16:21 I, you know, I couldn't decide,
16:22 I like this one as a golfer.
16:25 - Yeah.
16:25 - Because I think this is a golf picture.
16:28 You know, this is a chap, a player,
16:31 absolute peak of his swing, the light's lovely.
16:35 The fact he's just on an upslope
16:37 makes his body go into that wonderful shape
16:40 and the sun and the hair.
16:44 And this is where I'm going to come to
16:45 what I think is one of the most significant things
16:47 about photographing in the '80s,
16:50 was that a lot of golfers did not wear hats.
16:55 And if you look at a picture,
16:56 the first thing you're drawn to is the eyes of the subject.
17:00 I learned this very early in my sports photography,
17:02 you know, career that you had to get the eyes in focus.
17:07 If you don't get the eyes in focus,
17:09 the picture doesn't work.
17:10 When these golfers are wearing big visors
17:13 and big shadows under their eyes, you don't see them.
17:16 You don't see the subject.
17:17 And, you know, I had that, those lovely pictures of Seve,
17:21 Jack Nicklaus in '86, no hat.
17:25 The only person who got away with wearing a hat
17:27 was Greg Norman with the big straw hat,
17:29 which was, you know, it used to be kind of light
17:31 and it was part of his character.
17:34 But the Navy jumper,
17:36 there's something about the Navy jumper, isn't there?
17:37 It's like iconic.
17:39 And that, you know, that logo,
17:41 the Schlesinger Panther logo is iconic logo.
17:45 And yeah, so that's been great.
17:48 I mean, it's fantastic fun photographing him, basically.
17:54 (upbeat music)
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