Augusta Nationwide chairman Fred Riley has defended the membership’s resolution to ask 2009 Masters champion Angel Cabrera to this 12 months’s event after he served 30 months in jail for home violence.
On the eve of the 89th Masters, Ridley addressed complaints from girls’s teams in regards to the 55-year-old Argentine being welcomed again to the famed course, the place he was a part of Tuesday’s Masters Champions Dinner.
“Properly, we actually abhor home violence of any kind,” Ridley mentioned.
“Because it pertains to Angel, Angel has served the sentence that was prescribed by the Argentine courts, and he’s the previous champion, and so he was invited.”
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All previous winners usually are invited to every version of the Masters. Ridley famous final 12 months that Cabrera didn’t have a visa and was unable to enter the USA for the 2024 Masters.
Jamie Klingler, a co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, a British girls’s rights group and social justice organisation, was amongst these sad at Cabrera’s return.
“It appears so long as male athletes can excel at hitting a ball, we excuse those self same males hitting girls,” she advised the BBC.
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Cabrera was arrested in January 2021 in Brazil after failing to seem at a prosector’s workplace in Argentina the prior August on home violence accusations that included inflicting accidents and intimidation.
Cabrera was extradited to Argentina in June 2021 and later convicted, sentenced to 2 years in jail. In November 2022, he was convicted of one other assault and sentenced to an extra two years and 4 months in jail. He was launched from jail in August 2023.
One sufferer later mentioned Cabrera struck her and locked her in a closet. Cabrera, who underwent mandated remedy whereas incarcerated, admitted to Golf Digest he threw a cellphone at his accomplice’s head.
Whereas saying he revered the opinions of critics who complained he didn’t belong on the Masters, Cabrera replied Tuesday when requested his personal opinion: “I received the Masters. Why not?”