Back on the right path

Rafa Cabrera Bello’s career is on an upward curve again and he’s eyeing up a return to the world’s top 50

- MARK TOWNSEND

Winning is never easy, but it’s a damn sight harder when your game is off and you’re slamming down the trunk on a Friday night. In a sport of positive self-chatter twinned with nagging doubt, Rafa Cabrera Bello described his game as being in the “worst shape for a decade” coming into last year’s Spanish Open.

Come the end of the week, he was being applauded on to every green and tee and holing a birdie putt at the 73rd hole to get over the line in his national open. It was a victory for one of the really good guys.

Cabrera Bello is cool and normal in equal measure. One old-school rep described him as “one of the nicest tour pros I’ve ever come across”. A few days after his previous victory in Scotland, and on the eve of the 2017 Open, I was lucky enough to sit next to him at a dinner and there wasn’t even a hint of Mr Tour Pro about him. Even better, he was equally as friendly the following day when our paths briefly crossed. It has been known for some players to blank you within five minutes of the end of an interview; the Spaniard couldn’t have been further removed from that.

Fast forward four-and-a-bit years and Cabrera Bello, who would finish fourth at Birkdale that week, is again re-focusing on getting back to the game’s top table. He’s now a dad of two, having welcomed a son, Rafael Erik Cabrera Lundstedt, into the world a couple of months before the win in Madrid, and things are very much on the up again.