Senior Smoke
Angel Cabrera, a cigarette-puffing ex-looper from Cordoba, Argentina, surprises the golf community
Cabrera and Gardino puffed away during the nerve-racking homestretch.
To golf’s aficionados, Angel Cabrera has long been acknowledged as one of the game’s huge talents. His full swing is a portrait of graceful but unstudied athleticism spawned in the caddie yard, the 37-year-old’s bull-shouldered, 210-pound frame unwinding to deliver one of the heaviest hits in the game. It’s an action that screams “Made in Argentina”—as, unfortunately, does his putting stroke, which tends toward the jerky and jabby, the product of a country with extra-grainy Bermuda greens.
In those ways, Cabrera is very much a latter-day Roberto De Vicenzo. But the two Argentines had always parted company in their respective ability to win. Where De Vicenzo racked up some 231 victories worldwide, highlighted by the 1967 British Open at Hoylake, Cabrera had contended often in big events but never closed. With only three European Tour victories since 2001 to go with a bevy of lesser South American titles, he was labeled an underachiever likely to falter under pressure.
“He seems to make the big mistake,” the 84-year-old De Vicenzo said last year when asked about Cabrera. “He has to make what he has inside stronger.”
Sunday Cabrera proved he has, and with his victory at Oakmont, he and the Maestro have become more alike. “Roberto beat Jack, and now Angel has beaten Tiger,” said Argentina’s best LPGA player, Silvia Bertolaccini. “The difference is that the Latin countries barely knew what Roberto had done, while millions watched Angel. Now that Angel has gained confidence, he has the opportunity to do more, for himself and for Latin American golf.”
Where Cabrera found his new grit is open to speculation. Some Argentine observers believe that the positive, never-quit competitive demeanors of countryman Manu Ginobili of the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, and Cabrera’s close friend David Nalbandian, the world’s 26th-ranked tennis player, have made an impression on the native of Cordoba, who often turned hangdog under adversity. “He tends to get negative on the course,” said Eddie Gardino, Cabrera’s caddie since 2005. “When you are the best ball-striker but don’t make putts, it’s easy to get down. It would cause him to lose his concentration at crucial moments.”
But Charlie Epps, a Houston-based teaching professional who lived in the small Argentine city of Villa Allende in the 1980s and met Cabrera when he was as a young caddie at the Cordoba GC, believes that Cabrera’s problems with keeping his composure stem from a deep-seated anger rooted in growing up in an impoverished broken home. “I remember that when he started playing he really had a temper—he just couldn’t handle bad shots—and that hurt him as a tournament player for a long time,” says Epps. “He’s a wonderful guy who had a lot of issues because of a very tough childhood, and with time he’s learned to overcome them.”
Cabrera himself is a man of few words, and he offered only one in explanation for why he kept it together at Oakmont. Leaning back in his chair at the end of a celebration dinner Sunday night at Oakmont’s men’s grill in which he and half a dozen Argentine friends washed down filet with red wine, Cabrera puffed contentedly on a Montecristos and said, “Experiencia.”
It’s true that Cabrera had been in contention in majors many times. He finished one shot out of a playoff at the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie, held the lead during the second and third rounds of the 2001 Masters, and led the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills with a first-round 66, his tie for fourth at Carnoustie the best result. But after a disappointing third-round 76 last week that took him out of the lead and put him four strokes behind Aaron Baddeley, Cabrera finally applied the lessons.
- Keywords:
- Jaime Diaz,
- U.S. Open,
- Angel Cabrera,
- Argentine,
- golf,
- Oakmont
