Angel Cabrera placed T-10 in Abierto del Litoral (or the Coast Open), a tournament which has been a fixture of the PGA Tour Latinoamerica Developmental Series. This was his first 72 hole tournament after spending 30 months behind bars in Brazil and Argentina.
Cabrera won the tournament in 1995 and posted rounds of 71, 66, 67, 69. This was his first time playing competitive golf after playing on PGA Tour Champions since 2020. Joaquin Luduena, an amateur, beat PGA Tour rookie Alejandro Tosti at the first hole in a playoff for the title.
Cabrera, who spent more than two-years in jail for gender violence against two of Cabrera’s ex-girlfriends, was released on August 4. In January 2021, the Brazilian federal police arrested Cabrera on an Interpol warrant. Cabrera, the winner of both the U.S. Open in 2007 and the 2009 Masters in 2009, was sentenced to two years of prison in July 2021 for harassment and threats against Cecilia Torres Mana. His partner from 2016-2018.
Cabrera made his first public appearance since his release in an extensive interview conducted by Golf Digest. Cabrera’s new status as a father and husband is noted in the story. In Bower, a jail where Cabrera served his time, well behaved inmates received two-hour visits every 15 days with their partners. Cabrera and Yamila Alvarez’s son Felipe was born in November 2022. Two months after Cabrera’s release, they were married.
Cabrera added that “Felipe’s arrival” helped him a lot. Being a father once again “makes [him] stronger and makes him want to improve so I can help him grow into a good man.”
It is worth reading the entire interview in December 2023-January 2020. Here are a few excerpts.
“I’m not looking for anyone to blame any more.” When I was in detention, I realized I probably wouldn’t be alive today if I still had been outside and had behaved the way I did. Some nights, I slept in my prison cell and thanked God for my confinement. “What I was doing was crazy,” he said. “I did it to myself.” It’s already done. I can’t erase how I acted. “All I can do now is to move on and try something new.”
Cabrera recalled that during his final six months of prison, he was alone because his cellmate had been released. He read old golf magazines and articles about himself. He recalled, “I would get nostalgic but that helped me pass time.” “I would play back in my head the entire Sunday that I won the Masters: the playoff and the famous shot through the trees.”
Cabrera referred to Augusta National as a second home, where he had competed in the tournament 20 times consecutively from 1999 through 2019. It’s my dream, he said, to walk the course where I found so much satisfaction and joy. It would be an honor to attend the Champions Dinner and meet so many of golf’s best players. [Augusta National refused to comment on Cabrera’s invitation to Golf Digest.]
Cabrera claimed that he could go to the soccer field in his prison, and would use a stick or handle of a broom to take some swings. Cabrera said, “There was nothing that I could strike.”
El Terron Golf Club, Mendiolaza. He played his first round of golf 25 days after being released.
“I was racked by self-doubt. I wondered how well I’d hit it or if I could even hit the ball. It had been a long time. “I was afraid I would get frustrated,” said he. “I was obsessed with how my first shot would come out for the entire drive from the club.”
It was like riding a bicycle. He said that he had hit it perfectly. He said that walking 18 holes on the golf course after three years felt like a new beginning.
Cabrera expressed regret for “his grave mistakes.”
He added, “But I have also paid off my debts.” “I will work as hard as possible to improve my image. “I want to regain the stature that I had as an athletic.”
Cabrera missed 54 cuts during his 128 appearances on the PGA Tour in his last eight years. In that time, he won the Greenbrier Classic in 2014 and lost a play-off to Adam Scott at The 2013 Masters. He underwent surgery on his wrist left in October 2020, and continues to do physiotherapy twice a weekly. He hopes to make a comeback.
He said, “I was thinking about a comeback during the whole time I spent in prison.” “My goal will be to play and prepare for the Champions Tour. The only way I will know for sure if I am physically capable of competing at this level is when I compete. Mentally, I am already there. Golf is my life. Golf is my life. “I have to continue.”
