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The return of 2009 Masters champion Angel Cabrera to Augusta this year is hugely controversial - AP/Natacha Pisarenko
Whatever is on the menu for the Champions Dinner at the Masters, you can be sure that the bitter taste of disgust will linger.
Maybe not so much in the Augusta National clubhouse itself, where the winners will gather for the annual parade of the green jackets, but certainly to many in the world at large.
To think, in 2022, the word was that it had been “strongly suggested” to LIV rebel Phil Mickelson that it would be better if he stayed away, so as not to add any discomfort to such a venerable occasion. Just three years on, Angel Cabrera will be welcomed back into the fold at the 89th Masters. They will roll out the green carpet.
All a bit odd, no? You might suspect that the Argentine’s presence would be a tad awkward, seeing as he recently served 30 months in prison for domestic abuse. But, hey, this is a men-only function and there will be no need for any of that. Another serving of twisted morals, anyone?
Of course, the cry will go up that Cabrera, the 2009 winner who only missed playing in last year’s Masters because he could not obtain a visa, has served his time and should be able to resume his employment. Fair enough. However, Augusta goes out of its way to call its participants “invitees”. It was their choice. Nobody else’s.
So Cabrera will take his place among the legends and smile for the picture that goes around the globe. You know the score, a Jack Nicklaus here, a Gary Player there, a Tiger Woods at the back. Great golfers, even better humans, blah, blah, blah.
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Phil Mickelson received his third green jacket from Cabrera in 2010 - Reuters/Hans Deryk
Excuse a few women if they do not find the scenario at all honourable and instead are struck by utter revulsion and repulsion. And please mind those of us who will wonder why the feelings of those abused are deemed less important than the so-called rehabilitation of the abuser himself, and think of the words uttered by Jamie Klingler, the co-founded of Reclaim These Streets, earlier this week.
“As long as male athletes can excel at hitting a ball, we excuse those same men hitting women,” the women’s activist told Telegraph Sport. “Because that trophy is valued more than his victim’s life.”
Let us be honest, Cecilia Torres Mana, Silva Rivadero and Micaela Teresa Escudero are being badly let down by professional golf. They deserve better and the game should be ashamed.
Torres was Cabrera’s girlfriend and it was the violence he meted upon her that finally led to his first sentence of two years in July 2021. Torres detailed how Cabrera, “physically, psychologically, and sexually abused me” and how he was so violently controlling that on one occasion, when he believed she might try to escape a hotel room, “he locked me in, took my documents, and made me sleep in the closet”.
At that moment she was praying to simply emerge with her life intact. Torres somehow plucked up the courage to run and go to the police – “Angel always said that if I reported him, it would hurt his career and told me about all of his political contacts” – and spoke of her joy when he was sent down.
“But I am still afraid,” she added, explaining how her brother was robbed at his own home when he refused to inform Cabrera and his people as to her whereabouts. “I cannot be completely free or calm, knowing what kind of person he is and the threats he made. I believe my family and I are still at risk.”
The next year, Cabrera was sentenced to another two years and four months – to run concurrently – for assaulting Micaela Escudero, who came forward after Torres’s complaints. A sickening and very obvious theme became clear. In 2016, his ex-wife, Silva Rivadero, accused Cabrera of physical assault.
He initially survived that investigation, but as the net closed he chose to avoid justice by sidestepping his homeland. The two-time major winner was eventually captured in Rio de Janeiro in 2020. The Brazilian authorities were adamant he had no intention of returning to Argentina, despite being the subject of an Interpol warrant for his arrest.
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Cabrera was extradited to Argentina after being arrested in Brazil in June 2021 - Reuters
Yet since late 2023 Cabrera has been free and able to report the terrible conditions in which he was contained for the first five months in a Cordoba jail nicknamed “The Prison of Hell”. From hell to golfing heaven, eh? From a cement bed to the Champions’ Locker Room? That is where repenting can take you if you have the right CV, as he has pointed out himself..
“I am repentant and embarrassed,” Cabrera told Golf Digest. “I made serious mistakes. I refused to listen to anyone and did what I wanted, how I wanted and when I wanted. I ask Micaela for forgiveness. I ask Cecilia for forgiveness. They had the bad luck of crossing paths with me when I was at my worst. I wasn’t the devil, but I did bad things.”
Cabrera had a tough childhood – he was so poor he had no shoes and they call him “El Pato” because he still walks like a duck – and he has said sorry. So let him go out there in front of millions and, alongside the great veterans such as Bernhard Langer and Fred Couples, make a few birdies and remind us of his glories from yesteryear. What is the problem?
The answer is that his victims could and almost certainly will face further pain and trauma because of their own particular memories of Cabrera. And should not that be the primary concern here and in the ongoing debate about the rehabilitation of sportsmen – yes it is always men – from serious crimes against women in the public eye?
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Cabrera served 30 months in prison for his crimes - AP/Nicolas Aguilera
You can talk about second chances, about responsibilities as role models, about the wisdom of sporting authorities drawing moral lines – yet seemingly every point made in this multi-sided argument continues to ignore the rights of the innocent. Ask yourself which is more important: Cabrera’s right, at 55, to resume the fulfilment of a sporting dream; or the rights of Torres, Escudero and Rivadero to move on with their lives and not feel haunted by their attacker’s image and witness him being feted as some sort of returning hero?
If you were convicted of such crimes, do you think your employers would act so generously? Do you even think you could travel to the United States? It is a point picked up by Lisa Longstaff, from Women Against Rape.
“Violence against women and girls is a global pandemic: every 10 minutes a woman is killed by her partner or a family member,” she told Telegraph Sport. “The public should boycott Angel Cabrera and businesses that promote him.There’s many a sportsman, entertainer, politician, businessman, policeman, soldier who think they’re above the law because money and status protect them.
“It’s repugnant to promote men who sexually abuse their power over women. And how could he get into the US with a criminal conviction?”
Indeed. The gates of privilege have been conveniently re-opened and it would be nice, but maybe naive, to believe that the Masters patrons will not all cheer on regardless.
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