They have game, will travel
By Tim Rosaforte
GolfDigest.com exclusive
Golf World's Tim Rosaforte contributes a weekly "Tour Insider" column for GolfDigest.com
(April 17) -- Don't cry for Argentina, which is emerging the past two weeks as a world golf power. First Angel Cabrera at the Masters, and now Jose Coceres at the WorldCom Classic. From this country of 70,000 golfers on the east coast of South America, they have emerged from impoverished caddy backgrounds with hopes and aspirations of golfing fortunes abroad. Cabrera and Coceres -- two names to remember for future majors.
Coceres is proof that you don't have to swing like Tiger Woods, putt like Brad Faxon, or play every week like Vijay Singh, to win on the PGA Tour. The Argentine's flat-footed pass through the ball is right from the caddy yard, his stroke makes Billy Mayfair's look conventional and his schedule makes no sense. It didn't matter this past week at the WorldCom Classic, where on the 15th week of the season he beat a fairly strong post-Masters field that featured 14 of the top 25 players in the world, including Singh, Davis Love III and Jesper Parnevik.
This is one of the beauties of golf. Coceres has a "W" and has qualified for the 2002 Mercedes Championships at Kapalua. Singh, who has five top-3 finishes, is still shutout after a final-round 74 left him in third place, one stroke out of the playoff. Based on his form, and the two-stroke lead he held after 54 holes, it should have been Vijay's tournament. The loose swing that got him on Sunday at Pebble Beach and the Players Championship reared itself at Harbour Town, as he missed left twice over the final 18 holes and was unable to recover.
Coceres, meanwhile, has been all over the map this year -- literally and figuratively. He flew to Australia and lost in the first round of the World Golf Championships Match Play event to Faxon. He didn't play again until March 25, turning down an invitation to the Players Championship to compete in the European Tour's Sao Paulo-Brazil Open. Two weeks before that, Coceres passed on a chance to defend his title at the Dubai Desert Classic because tournament organizers paid Woods $2 million and were reportedly only offering him first-class airfare and accommodations.
After finishing second in Sao Paulo, he skipped his country's national championship and flew to Atlanta for the BellSouth Classic. He missed the cut at the TPC-Sugarloaf and the following week at the Masters, dropping to No. 54 in the world rankings. The win on Hilton Head Island jumps him up 25 places, to No. 29 in the world, and makes him eligible for the U.S. Open.
It also gives him one more U.S. victory than Colin Montgomerie, who is now 0-for-71 in America after winning seven European Tour money titles.
The long-hitting Cabrera, who is ranked No. 33, had another hot week in South America. He won the Argentine Open the week of the Players Championship, contended at Augusta before a double bogey at the 15th hole on Saturday and finished 10th. This past weekend he shot 60 in the final round of the Cordoba Open and won by three strokes over Eduardo Romero and Angel Franco, the brother of Carlos.
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