From green jacket to prison, Angel Cabrera’s big fall

His picture is still on the wall of champions in the press building at Augusta National, sandwiched between Trevor Immelman and Phil Mickelson. His chair at the champion’s dinner Tuesday night was empty, though, and if there was an invite to play the Masters this year, no one saw it.

As the Masters unfolds this week, Angel Cabrera sits in an Argentine prison. He’s serving two years for domestic abuse, and there’s a chance he could face an even longer sentence.

The glory of 2009 never seemed so far away.

“A lot of kids grow up without a role model and make some bad decisions, their anger within them takes over,” said Charlie Epps, a Houston golf pro who has a father-son relationship with Cabrera. “But it doesn’t justify doing the wrong thing.”

Cabrera was an unlikely champion to begin with, a street urchin who grew up without parents and never had a formal education. A huge crowd greeted him when he flew home after winning the 2007 U.S. Open and there was a parade in his honor.

Then he became a two-time major champion — and the first South American to win a green jacket — by winning a three-way Masters playoff in 2009. His future in golf seemed unlimited.

But what was once a feel-good story has now gone bad, and no one can predict when Cabrera will be free, much less play golf again.

Meanwhile, Epps watches Cabrera's vacant house in Houston and wonders how it all went wrong.

“I saw a lot of it in his golf, he was a perfectionist early on and had a temper,” Epps said. “He never had a sports psychologist or anything like that and he grew up with a chip on his shoulder. Once he got it under control, he became a champion he is.”

While the details of Cabrera’s case remain somewhat murky, he was charged with gender violence