Ten years ago Angel Cabrera was battling for his second Masters title in a sudden death playoff. This year, he has swapped the Green Jacket for prison scrubs.
Past Masters champions get an invite back to the first major of the year for life but it’s impossible for the 2009 winner to take a stroll back down Magnolia Lane from his cell in an Argentina jail, dubbed the Prison of Hell.
Cabrera’s name not only featured on the Past Champions Not Playing list for the 87th edition of the Masters but he didn’t even make it on the invite list.
With The Masters already well under way, Cabrera is nowhere near Augusta National. In fact, he is 4,000 miles away in a prison cell just south of Cordoba, Argentina’s second biggest city.
With his overhanging belly and huffing and puffing, Cabrera was an unlikely Masters champion, winning a three-way playoff against Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell in 2009.
Angel Cabrera won The Masters in 2009 but is a past champion who isn’t there this year
But it wasn’t his first major win. Cabrera, affectionately known as El Pato – The Duck – for his waddling gait and stocky frame, edged none other than Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk by one shot to claim victory at the 2007 US Open at Oakmont.
He came from a humble background, with his father a handyman and his mother a maid, and was raised by his grandmother from the age of four.
At age 10 he became a caddie at the Cordoba Country Club and learned to play golf, knocking it around with the other caddies to make money.
He was gifted his first set of clubs when he was 16 after catching the eye of a local property magnate.
The Argentine turned professional in 1989 but did not make it on to the European Tour until 1996 on his fourth attempt at qualifying.
As he made his way around the course a plume of smoke often trailed behind him as Cabrera was rarely seen without a cigarette in hand, famously smoking on every hole.
He won the Argentine Open in 2001 and the 2005 BMW Championship but his greatest triumphs were yet to come in 2007 and 2009.
When speaking about his victory at Oakmont, Cabrera said: ‘Well, there are some players that have psychologists, some have sportologists, I smoke.’
The Argentine clinched the Green Jacket in a three-man playoff at Augusta National
Cabrera won his first major in 2007, edging Tiger Woods (R) and Jim Furyk (L) to the US Open
The 53-year-old pictured with the US Open trophy after his one-stroke win at Oakmont
He came close at slipping into the Green Jacket for a second time in 2013, ultimately losing out to Australian Adam Scott in a playoff.
However, his last win came at the 2014 Greenbrier Classic and his performances steadily declined.
But his fall from grace really took a plummet in 2021, when his former girlfriend Cecilia Torres Mana made accusations of assault, intimidation and causing injuries against Cabrera.
Cabrera denied the accusations but two women, his former wife, Silva Rivadero, and former partner Micaela Escudero, also filed charges, according to reports.
‘I couldn’t go to the supermarket or the gym. Angel always believed I was going to be with another man. He followed me and took my cell phone,’ Torres Mana said in a self-written account for Orato.
‘He made me do very kinky things and hit me if I refused. If Angel was with his friends in a meeting, I had to be in the bedroom without an Internet connection. It was very humiliating.’
She went on to accuse Cabrera of making her do ‘very kinky things’ and said he hit her when she refused.
Torres Mana finally made her escape from Cabrera during a trip to Houston. She claimed that Cabrera had locked her in a closet and taken her phone and documents, but when he fell asleep, she caught a flight back to Argentina, reportedly fearing his reprisals against her and her family the whole way.
The first charges were brought by Cecilia Torres Mana (left), before his former wife Silva Rivadero (right) and another women subsequently filed complaints of domestic abuse
‘Angel always said that if I reported him, it would hurt his career and told me about all the political contacts he had. But one afternoon, I gained the courage to report him anyway,’ she wrote. ‘From that moment forward, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel.’
The golfer allegedly traveled to the United States in July 2020 and played in five tournaments in August and September, apparently without seeking the permission of Argentine authorities, as requested due to the investigation. Cabrera denied doing so.
‘Angel would often say that nobody could stop him,’ Torres Mana wrote, ‘and if they tried to arrest him, he would not go back to Argentina.’
Prosecutors in Cordoba then issued an international arrest warrant and he spent months on the run.
He was eventually arrested by Brazil’s federal police on an Interpol warrant in January 2021 and spent six months in a Brazilian prison before being extradited to his homeland.
‘He spent six months there,’ Cabrera’s former swing coach Charlie Epps told Golfweek in 2021. ‘Bad place. He got beat up. They didn’t care that he was Angel Cabrera. I had a lot of people approach me that they could get him out for $100,000 or this and that.’
After being extradited to Argentina in June 2021, he stood trial on charges of assault, theft, illegal intimidation and repeated disrespect to authorities.
His hometown of Villa Allende launched protests for his release with his supporters pointing to his charitable donations as evidence of his character.
Cabrera is led into custody after his extradition to Argentina from Brazil in June 2021
But they were to no avail with Cabrera’s trial going ahead.
And what a trial it was. Full of bizarre moments, Cabrera appeared to attempt to use his celebrity to his advantage.
He turned up to court in a jacket with the Presidents Cup logo, having represented the International team in 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2013.
He also donned a variety of interesting face masks, with the trial taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the opening day of proceedings, he wore a mask that featured the image of Eva Peron, who as he put it was ‘the first to fight for women’s rights.’
He was found guilty of assault against Torres Mana during the time they were together from 2016 to 2018 and began serving a two-year sentence immediately after the verdict.
While he maintained his innocence throughout the trail and beyond, prosecutors indicated that Torres Mana wasn’t his only victim.
‘His situation is much more complex than this, he has other charges for which there are arrest warrants too,’ prosecutor Laura Battistelli said at the time. ‘There are other victims.’
Last November, he was sentenced to another two years and four months for the assault of his other ex-partner, Escudero.
Cabrera is now an inmate at the Argentina’s infamous Carcel de Bouwer, dubbed ‘El Penal del Infierno’ – ‘The Prison of Hell’ – home to rapists, hitmen and murderers.
The gang-ridden prison near Cordoba is notorious for the overcrowded conditions and inmate violence within its walls, which hold some of Argentina’s most dangerous criminals.
A 2018 UN report claimed that detainees in Bouwer reported to ‘have been shackled or handcuffed by their feet and/or hands for periods between several hours and three days.’
The professional golfer holds his head in his hands while on trial in Argentina in 2021
Throughout the trial Cabrera wore a jacket with the Presidents Cup logo on and a facemask
Cabrera isn’t the only famous Argentine sportsman to have ties to the prison with former Manchester United and Manchester City soccer star Carlos Tevez making headlines in 2018 for a visit.
Tevez’s brother Juan Alberto Martinez was sentenced to a 16-year stretch in Bouwer in 2010 after being convicted of armed robbery.
The former forward was said to have injured himself during a game with inmates while visiting his brother in 2018, leaving his then team, Boca Juniors, reportedly furious. Tevez denied he sustained the injury during the prison kickabout, instead insisting that occurred while in the gym.
Another former Boca Juniors star, Bebelo Reynoso, has links to the jail, having been detained there for 10 days on charges of beating and threatening a minor with a firearm.
The prison is split into four different areas – or ‘modulos’ – due the inmates with ties to rival gangs.
The barras bravas – or ‘Ultras’ – follow two of Cordoba’s main football teams, Talleres and Belgrano, and the feud between the two sides is said to be so inflammatory that those with known links to either are segregated.
It is not known which part Cabrera is being held in or how he spends his days but he reportedly only has contact with his son, Angel Cabrera Jr., his lawyer, Carlos Hairabedian, and his manager, Manuel Tagle.
However, Cabrera doesn’t appear to have been traumatized by his stint locked up, in fact he claimed it has done him some good after he admitted to having struggled with alcoholism over the years.
Soccer star Carlos Tevez (above) has visited his brother Juan Alberto Martinez at the prison
Cabrera’s son, Angel Cabrera Jr. (pictured left after the duo won the PNC Championship in 2017) is one of three people his father is reportedly in contact with while in prison
Cabrera is eyeing a return to the course, according to former swing coach Charlie Epps
During his second trial, Cabrera told local press: ‘Many say prison is bad, but it’s not the case, prison has done me good.’
But he is eyeing a return to the course, according to former swing coach Epps.
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Epps said the 53-year-old still harbors ambitions of a return to professional golf.
‘It’s been a rough go,’ Epps said. ‘He was in prison in Brazil and then Argentina. He’s weathered the storm and it’s taught him a couple of very important lessons. He’s admitted that.
‘He’ll probably get out some time in the summer and he’s already at a halfway house. He wants to continue his golf career, the good Lord willing. I always welcome him. We’re just waiting for him to come home.’
Cabrera is scheduled to be released later this year but whether the powers that be will allow him to take the road to redemption down Magnolia Lane remains to be seen.
