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Madrid, Spain: Spanish police said Friday they had recovered pieces of a life-sized statue of golf great Severiano Ballesteros stolen by a suspect who likely wanted to sell it as scrap metal.
Ballesteros, who died at 54 of brain cancer in 2011, won five major championships between 1979 and 1988.
The statue, depicting Ballesteros winning the British Open in 1984, was installed in a park in his village of Pedrena in northern Spain in 2017.
Spanish police said the dismembered statue had been located in the northern city of Santander.
"The suspected perpetrator, a man with a history of copper thefts, has been detained," they said.
Spanish media said the statue, which was stolen earlier this month, weighed about 100 kilograms (220 pounds).
Sold as scrap metal, it could have fetched roughly 4,000 euros ($4,770), according to scrap prices listed on a local website.
