Ángel Cabrera knows what it is to touch the sky and step on hell. The 55 -year -old Argentine golfer, called the duck for his gunshot, made a summit and became the first Latin American dressed in the green jacket. It was the second big one, after the US Open of 2007, of a different player, along with Miguel Ángel Jiménez the last of a line of golfers who began as caddiesand of a peculiar type to whom the golf had taken from the street in Córdoba and who refuses to learn English. “If I don’t like something, I don’t do it. If I don’t speak English, it’s not my problem. I don’t sell myself, I’m not interested,” he said
They were his but other dark ones came. As his career went out, personal problems came, until in June 2021 he was sent to jail for sexist violence and the champion that had been became a prisoner who lived between bars more than two years, until August 2023, in prisons from Brazil and Argentina.
Since he fulfilled his punishment, life has granted an extra ball to Ángel Cabrera, which on Tuesday sat at the dinner of the champions as former winner of the Masters and that this Thursday will play the tournament for the first time since 2019. He already tried last year, but did not receive the permission of the US authorities to enter the country. “Now I feel that I have a second chance to return to the right path. I regret everything I did badly in the past and I have gripped very important years of my life. I made mistakes. It is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, not having freedom. It is really hard,” confesses the Argentine.
The return to the Masters, to the Golf family, coincides with its first victory in the senior circuit, the Champions Tour (from the age of 50), last Sunday in the James Hardie tournament, in Florida. “I never thought I was not going to return to masters. Now I am very grateful for how they have treated me. I respect those who think that I should not be here. Everyone has their opinion. Life has given me another chance, I have to take advantage of it and do the right things. I regret what happened and now I want to look at what is coming,” says Cabrera before his new life.
