Jailed Masters winner shares treatment at Masters | Golf News

Angel Cabrera pulled back the curtain on the treatment he obtained at this 12 months’s Masters Club dinner.

While talking to reporters at this week’s Senior PGA Championship, Cabrera revealed that he was warmly greeted by McIlroy and company.

“Yes, I enjoyed this,” he said of the Champions Dinner. “I’ve been with these guys for so many years — 30 years — so we had a great time.”

Though Cabrera’s return to the Masters swiftly drew a fierce wave of backlash given his rocky past, the 2007 U.S. Open champion burdened that he wished to “do things right in this second opportunity.”

“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 at the time.

Addressing the criticism directed his approach, he added: “I respect their opinion and everybody has their own opinion and I respect that. 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.

Over the last decade-plus, Cabrera has enjoyed a front row seat to McIlroy’s rise and fall at Augusta. In 2011, the Argentine was in the same group as the Northern Irishman as he squandered a four-shot lead on the last day of the Masters en route to shooting a final-round 80 and finishing T15.

Ahead of McIlroy’s inaugural Masters win at the 2025 major, Cabrera wished him good luck in a touching note. “What got here out of me on the last inexperienced there in the playoff was, you understand, at least 11 years, if not 14 years of pent-up emotion,” McIlroy said in his post-round press convention.

“You know, since 2011, I think it’s so ironic, as well. I got to my locker this morning and I opened it up, and there was a note in there from Angel Cabrera, and just wishing me luck. And Angel Cabrera was the player I played with on the final day in 2011. It was a nice touch and a little bit ironic at the same time. It’s been 14 long years, but thankfully I got the job done.”