The European captain was left heartbroken along with the rest of the golfing world when his great pal lost his battle against a brain tumour in May last year.
But Olazabal is sure the victorious 1997 skipper will be by his side during the biennial event, the first since his passing.
Olly said: “Seve will be present somehow. I will have to find a way.
“But I’m not going to be waking up at three in the morning and calling any of my vice-captains to check on pairings for the next day!
“It’s very difficult to compare to Seve in any way. He was really all over the place. I don’t know how he managed to be in so many places at the same time to be honest.“He was very close to the players, sometimes a little too close, trying to hit the shots. I’m not going to go that far.”
Olazabal was of course referring to Ballesteros’ ubiquitous marshalling of his troops at Valderrama in 1997.
The eight-cap Spaniard was so desperate to win on home soil he felt he had to tell his players which type of shot to hit and how the ball would react.
Most famously, Ballesteros’ overzealousness forced Colin Montgomerie to tell his captain to get lost during a crucial fourballs match on the Saturday morning.
Monty recalls: “We’re all square, there are 20,000 people on the bank at 17 and I’ve got 58 yards – this is as nervous as you get.
“He came up to me and said ‘Are you OK? Take it back, accelerate smooth, to the right of the hole’.
“I said ‘Look, Seve, I’m absolutely bricking it here, my partner’s in the water, it’s my shot’.
“But I won’t tell you what I said to him next, because it’s rude!”
While Ballesteros adopted a very hands-on approach to captaincy, Olazabal will speak from the heart to inspire his men.
Olly turned hardened, professional golfers to whimpering puppies when he spoke as a vice-captain on the eve of the singles at Valhalla in 2008.
Graeme McDowell remembers the evening: “We were all sitting around after the singles draw and Jose Maria just got up.
“He was very emotional and was feeling empathy with us.
“He has played many Ryder Cups and you could just see it hurt him to be injured and missing out.
“You could see the raw emotion. He spoke about the days he had spent out there with Seve and just how much the Ryder Cup meant to him.
“There was barely a dry eye in the room.”
Olazabal and Ballesteros are still Europe’s most successful partnership in Ryder Cup history and lost just two of their 15 games matches together.
Olazabal admits Seve prepared him well for the intensity of battle against the Americans.
He said: “I had heard about the Ryder Cup but I had never seen it until I took part (in 1987 at Muirfield Village) because it wasn’t on our television at home.
“It’s something that is completely different. You don’t see that atmosphere somewhere else.
“Seve anticipated that for me well in advance. As soon as I was in the team he made it clear to me.
“He told me the crowds were going to be big, loud, so that helped a lot. But you have to play in it to really get the feel of what it is.
“The first Ryder Cup I was learning and I let him do everything — he was in charge.
“As I played more we got to the level where we were approaching the match from the same perspective. It took, I would say, three Ryder Cups.”
Ballesteros also helped prepare Olazabal for the captaincy after he was appointed three months before the Pedrena local died, aged 54.
Olly said: “I talked to Seve about the captaincy when I made a couple of visits to his home when he was sick.
“He was very relaxed — he had a different view of it!”
Gone by then clearly was the intensity Ballesteros brought to the match and instilled into his young protege.
They last played together in 1993. Two years later Olazabal, having been chosen as a wild card by Bernard Gallacher, withdrew because of the suspected rheumatoid polyarthritis in his feet that left him crawling around his home and fearing he might end up in a wheelchair.
He could not hold back the tears after he returned to play under Ballesteros in their home country, but his own Ryder Cup was far from over.
Olazabal found himself at the centre of the controversy which marred the end to the 1999 match in Boston, witnessing an American invasion of the 17th green after Justin Leonard holed a 45ft putt.
It would have been fine if it had decided the match but the Spaniard had still to putt for a half. When things eventually calmed down he missed and spoke out afterwards about the need for sportsmanship and etiquette to be shown.
Not that he considers that episode his worst experience in the Ryder Cup.
Olazabal admitted: “The Brookline crowd was loud but I think the worst atmosphere was Kiawah (in 1991). It was the Iraq War and they wanted to relate that to the ‘War on the Shore’.
“I have always enjoyed the Ryder Cup but that year, from my point of view, the spirit was not what it’s supposed to be.
“That, I think, was the turning point to be honest. The next US captain Tom Watson settled things.
“I don’t think Davis (Love III) and I have to talk about it. He has a lot of respect for the game.”
Olazabal’s last playing appearance was 2006 in Ireland. Like Darren Clarke — the focal point of that week following the loss of his wife Heather to breast cancer — he played three games and won them all.
It meant he ended his career in the event with a record of 18 wins, five halves and eight defeats.
Now he will try as captain to put into action all that Ballesteros taught him. But win or lose one thing is sure — his mentor would have been so proud of the way he handled it.
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