Schauffele 'still burning' to regain form
Two-time major winner rebuilding confidence after injury; Cabrera returns to Augusta
Xander Schauffele is still finding himself after injury layoff (Thomas Lovelock/ANGC)
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Xander Schauffele is the last player to win a major championship. Seems a long time ago now that he hoisted the Claret Jug on a gloomy July day in Scotland.
Enough time for one of the game’s elite players to experience periods of doubt, mostly due to injury. And too much time spent thinking about it.
Schauffele is competing in the Masters this week, but perhaps without the burst of confidence you might expect from someone who won two major championships last year and has contended at Augusta National in the past.
The rib injury that sidelined him for the better part of six weeks earlier this year — from just after the season-opening Sentry to the Arnold Palmer Invitational last month — meant a lack of preparation as well as some poor golf in the lead up to the year’s first major.
Notably, it is the first time in his career that Schauffele, 31, has dealt with an injury.
“I felt dumb at one point, sort of being the brunt of it’s my fault,” he said at Augusta National on Monday. “Felt a little unprofessional, felt irresponsible and I felt sad. Then I was motivated, then I felt sad again. Then motivated finally.
“I don’t know if there’s, like, a grieving process, but I kind of dealt with it on my own. Like I said, I knew I was going to come back and play, I just didn’t know when. When it comes to feel, I feel like I’m a kid. I just want to go out and play golf and compete at a high level, and that was stripped away from me. Luckily, I have a very supportive wife and family to keep me entertained during the downtime.”
The downtime gave Schauffele time gain some perspective — to contemplate what he’s achieved and what awaits.
“Maybe I was more emotionally unstable than I thought I was through certain weeks,” he said. “Everything is gravy when it’s gravy. It was a nice wake-up call to maybe be a little more responsible when need be.
“It was a reminder of how much I love to play and compete. I think guys talk about, ‘Oh, I’ve been on tour for 20 years; things go by so fast.’ For me, it’s been eight or nine years. But it’s gone by very fast. To be able to take a step back after winning two majors and sort of accomplishing a lot, to still feel some fire burning watching other guys playing really well is a huge thing because at some point in my life that’s not going to happen, so I’m lucky that it’s still burning.”
Schauffele noted that even before he was injured, he was not all that enamored with his game. He was working on swing changes that helped him win the PGA Championship and the Open, but ones he felt were still not engrained.
But he took some time off after the Presidents Cup in September and played just one fall event. When he was forced by the injury to take time off after the first tournament in January, he suddenly was playing catch-up to get ready for the Masters.
Schauffele had to scramble to make the cut at his first two tournaments, tying for 40th at Bay Hill and then finishing 72nd at the Players after a final-round 81 left him 25 shots behind winner Rory McIlroy, who also passed him for No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking behind Scottie Scheffler.
Schauffele, who has nine career PGA Tour wins, also has four top-10s in seven appearances at the Masters, including a tie for second just a shot behind Tiger Woods in 2019. The last time he missed a cut on the PGA Tour (his tour-leading cut streak has now reached 60 tournaments) came at the 2022 Masters. He finished eighth at Augusta National last year.
“Last year, I was firing on close to all cylinders at some points, and I sort of saw what that got me and how far that got me,” Schauffele said. “If I’m healthy, I’m moving well, I’m swinging well, I’m doing the things that I did to prepare correctly in the past, like I said, I don’t have a ton of reps under my belt this year, but I sort of know where that can get me.
“So there needs to be a lot of self-belief that I can get back to that spot, and that’s kind of where I’m laying my head to rest.”
Angel Cabrera is back after serving prison sentence for domestic assault in Argentina (Simon Bruty/ANGC)
Cabrera finds ‘joyfulness’ in Masters return
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The question to Angel Cabrera was direct and to the point – considering what you’ve done in the past, do you think you belong here?
“I won the Masters, why not?” said the 2009 champion making his first appearance at Augusta National in six years and since being released from an Argentina prison serving time on two criminal domestic assault convictions.
This was uncharted territory in 88 years of Masters champions, and Cabrera said he understands that some people may not welcome seeing him competing in one of golf’s most cherished events.
“Everybody has their own opinion and I respect that,” he said via a translator on Tuesday at Augusta National.
“Life has given me another opportunity. I got to take advantage of that and I want to do the right things in this second opportunity.
“There was a stage in my life of five years – four, five years – that they weren’t the right things I should have done. Before that I was okay, so I just have to keep doing what I know I can do right. … Obviously I regret things that happened and you learn from them, but at the same time those are in the past and we have to look forward what’s coming.”
In 2021, Cabrera was arrested in Brazil after Interpol issued a red notice listing him as a fugitive for leaving Argentina as he faced several domestic criminal charges including assault and intimidation of his female partners. He was extradited, convicted and sentenced to two years in an Argentine prison. A year later he was convicted of a second assault charge and sentenced to an additional 26 months in prison. He was released early in August of 2023. Despite being cleared to return to play in tour-sanctioned events by the end of 2023, his visa to travel to the United States was not reinstated in time to compete in last year’s Masters.
Once cleared to travel, Masters chairman Fred Ridley said Cabrera was welcome to return to the Masters as a lifetime exempt qualifier for winning the green jacket in 2009.
Some people have objected to Cabrera being allowed to compete at Augusta considering the nature of his crimes, but the Masters refused to deny him a second chance after he served his time.
“I’m very grateful and obviously the people of the golf world are very great with me and I just appreciated the way they treated me,” Cabrera said Tuesday via a translator.
Cabrera – who hadn’t attended the Masters since 2019 – said he wasn’t worried that he would never be invited back.
“No, I never thought of that, I just let things pass, and I never thought either I was going to come back or not, it’s just the way things happen,” said Cabrera, who described his emotions as “joyfulness” to be able to put on the green jacket again and have dinner Tuesday night with his fellow champions.
The 55-year-old two-time major winner said he missed seeing his peers, though he noted that Gary Player was the only Masters champion who called and kept in touch with him while he was in prison.
“Since the situation I had, he’s always been in contact with me, always been by my side. So the only guy I talked to is Gary,” he said. “Like any colleague, he wanted to give me advice, that things were going to happen and things would get better, and that’s what’s happened.”
Cabrera isn’t just returning as a former champion, he’s returning as a newly minted winner on the PGA Tour Champions having won on Sunday the James Hardie Pro-Football Hall of Fame Invitational by two strokes over K.J. Choi. Cabrera also was the Paul Lawrie Matchplay last summer on the European Legends Tour.
Cabrera is the second former prisoner to win in professional golf this season after former gang member Ryan Peake won the New Zealand Open in January – earning a spot in the Open at Royal Portrush. The Australian Peake, 31, served five years in prison for assault when he was 21.
Having finished top-10 six times, including his victory (2009) and runner-up (2013), in a 13-year stretch at Augusta, could a 55-year-old ex-con produce some kind of magic this week?
“I’m very happy, had a great week and that obviously gives me a lot of confidence to even play better this week,” Cabrera said of his senior victory on Sunday. “It’s (the ANGC course) obviously playing longer, I don’t have that distance that I used to have. But you never know. It’s the Masters, anything can happen.”