McEwan: Fallen Angel Cabrera should be nowhere near The Masters

Last week, Augusta National Golf Club welcomed some of the very best female golfers on the planet, an international field congregating for the sixth Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

This week, it will welcome a man convicted of several counts of serious abuse against women.

Angel Cabrera will play in The Masters for the first time since his arrest, conviction and 30-month incarceration for multiple counts of violence against multiple ex-girlfriends.

Courtesy of his victory in the 2009 tournament, the 55-year-old Argentine has a lifetime exemption to take part in The Masters – a privilege the club evidently has no intention of revoking, despite his awful crimes.

Speaking to reporters last year, chairman Fred Ridley hailed him as one of the tournament’s “great champions” and insisted Augusta National would “definitely welcome him back”.

And so here we are. Cabrera will peg it up in the opening men’s major of the year, compete for his share of a $20million prize fund, and join his fellow former champions in a parade of green jackets at Tuesday’s Champions Dinner.

Don’t know about you, but that makes me feel a combination of queasy and apoplectic.

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Well, actually, that’s not true. I do know about you. A recent poll on the bunkered X account found that more than 70% of respondents approve of Cabrera’s participation, with many users of Elon Musk’s toxic vitriol machine messaging me directly to wail that the two-time major champion has served his time and point out that he is hardly the first sportsperson to go to jail.

But hang on. Frank Sinatra and Chico are both singers – it doesn’t make them remotely comparable.

Angel Cabrera didn’t diddle the taxman. He didn’t pinch milk off his neighbour’s doorstep. Instead he — well, let’s allow one of his victims to explain, shall we?

Cecilia Torres Mana has courageously detailed how the two-time major champion “physically, psychologically, and sexually abused” her during their relationship.

She told of how he would hit her if she refused to indulge his “kinky” requests; how he followed her when she went grocery shopping or to the gym, paranoid that she was meeting another man; how he locked her in a hotel room and made her sleep in a closet when she accompanied him to a golf tournament in Texas; how he “forbade” her from seeing her family, including making visits to her dying cancer; and how he made sinister threats about what would happen if she ever left him.

Cabrera did all this, then went on the run to try and escape justice, compelling Interpol to place him on its ‘red list’.

Oh yes. What a great champion.

Not even his conviction brought Torres Mana any kind of relief. “I am still afraid,” she added. “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.”

As for having “served his time”, the suggestion that this entitles him to resume all aspects of his former life is erroneous. It entitles him to be released from jail. Nothing more. Anything else is at the discretion of others.

And that’s where Augusta National Golf Club has got this so very badly wrong.

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Welcoming Cabrera back into the Masters fold is a lamentable misstep by an organisation that has – by its own actions – endured a complicated relationship with women throughout much of its history; a relationship it has gone some way to repairing, first by revoking its male-only membership policy in 2012 and then, in 2019, by creating the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

Under the leadership of Ridley and Billy Payne before him, the Georgia club has become an increasingly progressive and influential player in a sport still burdened by outdated misconceptions and ill-informed bias.

It has championed inclusivity and demonstrated extraordinary philanthropic and community spirit, turning an overdue blind eye to gender and ethnicity. By virtue of the heinous crimes he has committed, there is an argument that Cabrera sacrificed the right to remain a part of this space. And yet apparently not.

None of which is to say he should be denied the opportunity to play his way into the tournament. A core tenet of punishment is the opportunity for rehabilitation and starting over. But Cabrera isn’t starting over. He is being parachuted back into one of sport’s most privileged environments. “Nice to see you again, Angel. How have you been, buddy?”

That the manosphere is already celebrating this as a triumph for its pernicious interpretation of masculinity over the perceived ‘woke ideology’ it rails against is instructive. It’s a venomous, malignant movement that deserves no encouragement. Trust golf to give it some.

One must also wonder where Augusta National draws the line. Four years ago, Wayne Player – son of three-time Masters champion Gary – hijacked the honorary starters’ ceremony with a risible piece of ambush marketing. The club responded by banning him from The Masters for life. So, what? Opportunism is a more serious offence than abusing women? Make it make sense.

If I’m honest, I hesitated over publishing this piece. That’s how reluctant I am to give Cabrera the oxygen of further publicity. He deserves neither my time nor my attention. I do sincerely hope he has been reformed by his time in jail and that he is winning his battle with the many demons that led him down this particular road to perdition.

But by the same token, I hope his dinner’s cold on Tuesday night and that he misses the cut by a million.

Michael McEwan is bunkered's Head of Content and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Head of Content