An Adoring Home For the Green Jacket

Home Town Cheers Masters Winner

VILLA ALLENDE, Argentina -- The road through Villa Allende passes lumberyards and hardware stores, one-story concrete houses and a dirt soccer field in a park of patchy grass -- an unlikely setting for the center of Latin American golf.

It was along this road that people turned out recently to greet the motorcade of hometown hero Angel Cabrera, the former caddie and new Masters champion, hoisting banners and shouting for "The Duck," as Cabrera, with his lumbering gait, is known here.

Such a welcome would be expected for anyone who had just won a sudden-death playoff to become the first South American golfer to triumph in golf's most prestigious tournament. But the 39-year-old Cabrera means something more in this small town on the scruffy outskirts of the industrial city of Cordoba.

Cabrera's rise from poverty to international fame has almost become a viable career path here, where poor children aspire to be golfers the way youngsters in American cities might harbor hoop dreams. Before Cabrera, there was Eduardo "The Cat" Romero, who started caddying as a 7-year-old at the Cordoba Golf Club, where Cabrera also caddied, and last year won the U.S. Senior Open. Hoping to follow Cabrera are his two sons -- Federico, a 20-year-old professional on the South American tour, and Angel Jr., a talented 18-year-old amateur.

In Villa Allende, people sometimes refer to where they live not by a street name but by proximity to a certain hole on the golf course. Golf fever reached its peak the weekend after the Masters, when the Cordoba Golf Club hosted its 78th annual Center Open. And Cabrera came home to play.

"I am a barber, and I play golf. So does the butcher, so does the factory worker, the lawyer, the caddie," said Maximiliano Tejerina, who skipped work for four days to follow Cabrera throughout the tournament.

"There is nothing like this in Argentina, in Latin America," said Juan Dussaut, a retired civil engineer watching the tournament. "They live for golf in Villa Allende."

No one lived for it more than Cabrera. He grew up poor and was raised by his grandmother a few blocks from the golf course after his parents separated. He began carrying clubs as a 10-year-old to make money, shagged practice balls on the driving range and worked for a time as a gardener at members' homes. He left school after his elementary years -- in stark contrast to the many American golfers who make their way up through junior tournaments and university programs.

"Ninety percent of the Argentine professionals have been caddies. It's incredible," Romero said. "For us, golf has been a way of life. We are going to make money as a caddie in order to eat, because the majority of caddies are poor."

About 100 caddies work at the Cordoba Golf Club, from young boys to old men, and they are allowed to play on the cypress-and-eucalyptus-lined fairways free of charge on Mondays. Cabrera, who started with borrowed equipment, soon revealed natural talent and a passion for the sport.

"He would walk around all day with a club in his hand. He would be swinging a club in his house -- he always had it," said Luis Almada, 49, who worked at the course with Cabrera for years and was picking up trash there this weekend.

One member gave the teenage Cabrera his first set of clubs, and others sponsored his trips to tournaments in the country and abroad. By the time he was 20, Cabrera was playing professionally in Argentina, then in South America, Europe and the United States. He has won two tournaments on the PGA Tour, both major championships: the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont, outside Pittsburgh, and this year's Masters in Augusta, Ga.

"He has this inner strength because of the hunger that he went through, which was tremendous. He lived in very serious poverty," said Luis Rodríguez Magnasco, Cabrera's first manager.

Cabrera was already a legend at the Cordoba Golf Club before those victories. He has won the Center Open seven times, including in 2001, when he shot a course-record 60 on the final round. He once beat a member by playing with only two clubs, an eight-iron and a three-iron, and on other occasions has beaten two members teamed up against him, said Manuel Tagle, the club's president.

"He always put on shows on the golf course," Tagle said. "He likes to do that."

Cabrera's black hair is graying now, and he has an ample paunch, but he is built for power, carrying about 210 pounds on a 6-foot frame. He ranks fourth on the PGA tour in driving distance with an average of 303 yards. He plays aggressively and can appear testy on the course. "Sometimes he gets ugly angry," said his caddie at the Center Open, Victor Ocampo.

Off the course, his friends say, he is a man of simple pleasures who enjoys Argentine barbecue and poker with his lifelong buddies. He has helped pay to remodel the caddie shack at the club course and started a foundation for poor caddies, providing support that includes medicine and funds for travel to tournaments.

"He's the same today as he always was," Rodríguez said. "The only thing that's changed is his bank account." Cabrera is ranked 13th on the PGA tour money list, having amassed $1,553,251 in winnings so far this year, including $1.35 million at the Masters.

"I came here to work, more than anything else," Cabrera said in an interview, talking about his beginnings as a caddie. "All of this [success] seemed very far away."

Around strangers, he tends to be reserved, enduring the now-constant attention from reporters and photographers with only a thin veneer of patience.

The press "is the thing he doesn't like most, but he knows he has to do it," said Natasha Escarguel, who organizes Cabrera's schedule.

Reporters surrounded him after his final round at the Center Open, even though he'd finished third in the tournament.

"It was a good week, I can't go back and play it again. Just to be here in Villa Allende is very important for me," Cabrera said. "The truth is, it's impressive. I've been coming here for a long time, and I've never seen this many people. It's important in general for Argentine golf."