Angel in the 156-player field
Angel Cabrera, the winner of the 107th U.S. Open, has, up until Sunday, not gotten the credit he rightfully deserves. He has never missed a cut in the U.S Open in eight career starts, and he has T-4 and T-7 finishes in the British Open to his credit.
The 6’0’’, 210 pound Cabrera, who led the field in driving distance this week is a certainly a big-game player. “I definitely usually play very well in the U.S. Open,” said Cabrera through his translator Manuel Tagle. “Most of the time I'm not making any putts, but this week it was like everybody was missing the putts. So that gave me an advantage.”
Tiger Woods definitely falls into the category of players who were not able to get putts to fall. “For most of the week, I kept having these big, breaking putts and I had to be real defensive and basically feed the ball down there,” said Woods. “Hopefully it went in, but the majority of the putts didn't. … I hit the ball good on that back nine [on Sunday]. I just needed obviously to make one more putt.”
Cabrera, though, wanted to make it clear that it was more than just Woods he beat this week.
“The good thing is that I beat everybody here, not only Tiger Woods,” he said through his translator. This is true. Cabrera, the 41st ranked player in the world coming into the tournament, beat the number one, two, three, all the way to 40th best players in the world (except for no. 17 Choi-Kyung-Ju, no. 27 Brett Wetterich and no. 34 Richard Sterne who failed to qualify for the championship).
Despite the monumental achievement, the humble Argentine, still tried to downplay the significance of his victory. “[San Antonio Spurs’ guard Manu] Ginobili is still going to be there on the front pages because he has accomplished things that no other Argentine has,” said Cabrera in Spanish. “What I have done has already been done by [Roberto] DeVincenzo, so what [Manu] has done will be more recognized.”
When asked where he was going to put his new trophy, Cabrera said in Spanish, “With me, in my bed. It's going to sleep with me.”
It has been a long week, playing a brutally difficult golf course. No wonder sleep was on the champion’s mind.
--Jeff Patterson
Comments