Philip Reid lived the dream on Wednesday when he was paired with Seve Ballesteros in the pro-am. But after Thursday's sad scenes, he wonders if it's time the great man called it a day

Is this it? Can it really end like this? If so, is it okay for grown men to cry? He was the golfer all men wanted to be, the reason why players all over Europe walked into golf shops and let salesmen talk them into extricating credit cards and walking out the door with shiny new bags and even shinier clubs. Seve Ballesteros was magic, and magical. He hit shots that were impossible, and he took our breath away.

On Thursday evening, he took our hearts, too. Four times he put the ball into the water that nudges up to the 18th green at Fota Island. And we wondered, can this little piece of tranquillity, in a corner of Ireland, have witnessed the end of the legend? Can the magic simply fade away? Can it all end with a wrong score and a quick visit to the course early the next morning to collect his clubs, say his goodbyes, give his apologies and exit head down in a courtesy car? Adiós, Seve.

Yesterday he edged closer to seemingly inevitable retirement. Disqualified from the Irish Open on Thursday, he subsequently withdrew from next week's European Open and, later in the day, faxed the R&A to tell them he would not be playing in the British Open at Muirfield. He also cancelled a site trip to the Heritage Club, a course he is designing near Portlaoise.

This beaten man once stood so proud. No one hit so many bad shots in a tournament, but no one hit as many beautiful ones to recover. Throughout his career he rejected the concept of losing. Even in the pro-am on Wednesday, on the eve of what could now prove to be his last Irish Open appearance, he stubbornly refused to accept that his time was in the past.

The call to play on Seve's team in the pro-am had come on Monday. Like those of the older generation who remember where they were when John F Kennedy was shot, or the younger generation who recall when they first heard of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, my moment in time came that morning when a phone call from the man in Bord Fáilte fulfilled a dream. Play in the pro-am? On Seve's team? A roadside in Mountrath had never seemed as much like heaven.

On Wednesday, the alarm call came at seven, two hours after I'd woken up. You can't be late for a game with Seve. You're by the first tee early, just in case. So is Con Horgan, another member of the team, and then Frank Murray, the third amateur, arrives.

You're shaking hands with the great man, not as a reporter, but as a fellow golfer. The smile is warm. The tattoo on his left arm is an outline of his swashbuckling self, arm raised in fist-pumping triumph. A memory of the old days.

On the day, Seve has his problems with the putter, but any putt which shaves the hole is met with a sharp remark. "Robbery," he says, "just like a Korean soccer match."

And all the way round our pro-am round, the impulse to solve imperfection is incessant. He is standing on the tee, his arms raised above his shoulders and he is still, like a statue, seeking the perfect takeaway that once came so naturally.

Not only that, but there is a compulsion to fix imperfection in others. "Demasiado rapido . . . too fast, Philip," he says of a swing born on Dublin hurling fields. "Suave. Suave."

Not content with that, he insists on a lesson. Narrow your stance. More. Move your head. More. Okay, hit. The ball flies 30 yards right of the fairway, into heavy rough, never to be seen again. Someone calls from the ropes: "Now you're playing like Seve." Not fair.

Seve walks on, and stops in the fairway. He is searching again, seeking the optimum position at the top of his backswing from which he can pull the trigger and release the club consistently. Searching for the perfection of old.

Hindsight is a great thing and, in hindsight, it was possible to see that Seve would struggle to make the cut. But who was to know it would be as bad as it was? He hadn't played since the Spanish Open in April and, now, who knows when he will play again?

Maybe he should stop, and leave us with the memories.

Like those of 1976 when, as a teenager, he finished second in the British Open at Royal Birkdale and gave us a first glimpse of his imagination. On the 18th, and faced with a chip shot over bunkers that would be impossible to stop near the flag, he spotted another route. It involved playing a chip-and-run along a narrow isthmus of grass between the bunkers. It had to pitch on a sixpence, take a kindly bounce and above all be perfectly weighted. The ball rolled to two feet and he finished tied-second with Jack Nicklaus behind Johnny Miller.

In the Ryder Cup of 1983, he played one of the greatest bunker shots of all time. In his match with Fuzzy Zoeller at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, he hit his drive on the 18th into rough. His recovery managed only to find a bunker that was meant to penalise the drive. The ball was in the face of a steep bunker and he had 245 yards to reach the green.

To everyone's amazement, he pulled out a three-wood and found the edge of the green.

"He does that sort of thing all the time, don't make the mistake of believing that it is luck," remarked Raymond Floyd.

In his heyday, Seve was the best. He won five Majors, and accumulated 88 professional titles worldwide. He was on World Cup and Ryder Cup winning teams. As Ben Crenshaw observed, "Seve's got shots people don't even know about . . . he's the most talented, innovative shot-maker we have in golf."

Ballesteros was a man who loved to be in control, and when his swing went, he wasn't. "When I was playing good," he was to remark, "I knew I was in control. I was in control of the galleries, of the golf courses, even the other players. I knew I would win and winning was enough. I did not celebrate when I won and I never have. The winning was always enough and the celebration was the feeling of controlling everything around me. There was never any big meal. There was no wine. I had to be ready for the next week. I have only been drunk twice in my life and that was at Christmas. I hated it. I was out of control."

These days, his swing is not his. He stands over the ball, and everything looks as perfect as it always was. But he is not in control, and who knows if he ever will be again?

Maybe it is time to stop tormenting himself, and let everyone live with the memories.