Angel Cabrera finished T-10 at Abierto del Litoral, or the Coast Open, a tournament that has been a fixture on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica Developmental Series, his first 72-hole tournament since spending 30 months in jail in Brazil and Argentina.
Cabrera, 54, who won this tournament in 1995, posted rounds of 71-66-67-69, his first competitive golf since playing on PGA Tour Champions in 2020. Amateur Joaquin Luduena beat PGA Tour rookie Alejandro Tosti on the first hole of a playoff to claim the title.
Cabrera was released from jail on Aug. 4 after he completed more than two years in custody over gender violence cases against two of his ex-girlfriends. Brazil’s federal police arrested him on an Interpol warrant in January 2021. Cabrera, winner of the 2007 U.S. Open and 2009 Masters, was sentenced in July 2021 to two years in prison for threats and harassment of Cecilia Torres Mana, his partner between 2016 and 2018.
In an extensive interview with Golf Digest, Cabrera spoke for the first time since his release. The story notes among other details that Cabrera is a new father and husband. At Bower, one of the jails where he served time, well-behaved inmates were permitted two-hour visits with partners every 15 days. In November 2022, Yamila Alvarez, Cabrera’s partner of four years, gave birth to their son, Felipe. They were married two months after his release.
“Felipe’s arrival helped a lot,” Cabrera said, adding that being a father again “makes me stronger, makes me want to get better, so I can be there for him and help him grow and become a good person.”
The entire interview, which is in the December 2023-January 2024 issue, is worth reading. Here are some excerpts:
“I don’t look for people to blame anymore. While I was detained, I realized that if I had still been out — and been behaving the way I had been — I would probably not be alive now. There were nights I lay in my cell thanking God for my imprisonment. What I had been doing was so crazy,” he said. “I did all this to myself. But it’s done. I can’t erase how I acted. All I can do is move forward and do something different.”
Cabrera noted that during his last six months in prison he was alone after his cellmate was released and he read old golf magazines with articles about himself. “I’d get nostalgic but it helped me pass the time,” he recalled. “I remember nearly every strokes of that Sunday I won the Masters and would replay it in my mind: the playoff, the famous shot I made through the trees.”
Cabrera called Augusta National, where he competed 20 consecutive times through 2019, like a second home. “It’s my dream to return to that prestigious place and walk the course that gave me so much joy and satisfaction,” he said. “It would be a great privilege to return and to attend the Champions Dinner with so many of the golf world’s greatest players.” [Augusta National declined to comment to Golf Digest on the status of Cabrera’s invitation.]
Occasionally, Cabrera said he was allowed to go out to a soccer field at his prison and he would take a stick or a broom handle and take some swings. “There was nothing there that I could hit,” he said.
He hit his first golf shots 25 days after his release at El Terron Golf Club in Mendiolaza.
“I’d been racked with self-doubt — wondering how well I would hit it, or even if I would be able to hit the ball at all. So much time had passed. I was scared I’d get frustrated,” he said. “For the entire drive to the club, I obsessed about how my first drive would turn out.”
But it turned out to be like riding a bike. He said he hit it beautifully. “To be on a golf course again after three years, to walk 18 holes again, it felt like a rebirth,” he said.
Cabrera expressed remorse for “his serious mistakes.”
“But I’ve also paid my debts,” he said. “I’m going to work as hard as I can to clean up my image. I want to recover the stature I had as an athlete.”
In his last eight years on the PGA Tour, Cabrera had four top-10 finishes, missing 54 cuts in 128 appearances. During that stretch he lost a playoff to Adam Scott at the 2013 Masters and had a victory at the 2014 Greenbrier Classic. He had surgery on his left wrist in October 2020 and is still doing physiotherapy for it twice a week. He said he hopes to mount a comeback.
“I thought about making a comeback the entire time I was in prison,” he said. “My goal is to prepare and play on the Champions tour. When I’m out there competing, that’s when I’ll truly know if I can handle it physically at that level. Mentally, I’m already there. Golf is everything to me. It’s my life. I have to continue.”