Angel Cabrera became the first Argentine to win the green jacket at Augusta National on Sunday by surviving a wild final round that began with a supercharged duel between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and ended with a stunning collapse by Kenny Perry.
Indeed, this Masters had it all.
Two shots behind with two holes to play, Cabrera worked his way into a three-way playoff when the 48-year-old Perry, on the verge of becoming golf’s oldest major champion, bogeyed the final two holes.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Even in a playoff, Cabrera looked like the odd man out.
He drove into the trees, hit another shot off a Georgia pine, but still scrambled for par with an 8-foot putt. He won with a routine par on the 10th hole.
“This is a great moment, the dream of any golfer to win the Masters,” Cabrera said through an interpreter during the green jacket ceremony. “I’m so emotional I can barely talk.”
“It’s a course that you can do a lot of birdies, a lot of bogeys,” Cabrera added later. “A lot of magical things happen. It’s simply the Masters.”
Perry’s charge wilted on the 10th when he missed the green badly to the left and made yet another bogey, this one the most costly of them all.
Cabrera, who won the 2007 US Open, finally earned a green jacket for Argentina. It was 41 years ago when Roberto de Vicenzo made one of golf’s most famous gaffes, signing for the wrong score that denied him a spot in a Masters playoff.
De Vicenzo gave him a picture of a green jacket two years ago when Cabrera returned home as US Open champion and told him to go for it. On this turbulent day, it took everything Cabrera had.
He closed with a 1-under 71 to get into the first three-man playoff at the Masters in 22 years.
Chad Campbell finished with a 69 and was eliminated on the first playoff hole when he found a bunker from the middle of the 18th fairway, then watched his 6-foot par putt lip out of the hole.
The final hour was almost enough to make a dizzy gallery forget about the Woods-Mickelson fireworks hours earlier.
For those who feared Augusta National had become too tough, too dull and far too quiet, the roars returned in a big way. Mickelson and Woods played together in a final round of a major for the first time in eight years, and they proved to be the best undercard in golf.
Mickelson tied a Masters record with a 30 on the front nine to get into contention. Woods chased him around Amen Corner, then caught him with three birdies in a four-hole stretch that captured the imagination of thousands of fans who stood a dozen deep in spots for a view.
But it ended with a thud.
Mickelson lost his momentum with a 9-iron into Rae’s Creek on the par-3 12th, and when he missed a 4-foot eagle putt and a 5-foot birdie putt down the stretch. He had to settle for a 67 that left him three shots behind.
Woods bogeyed the last two holes for a 68 to finish another shot back.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS