THEY CALL him El Pato – aka “The Duck” – simply because of his gait, a walk you’d imagine belonged to many a beef farmer on the Argentine prairies. With his broad and often hunched shoulders, you’d also imagine nothing could faze him. And, yet, on Sunday evening when Trevor Immelman did his duty and placed the Green Jacket on new US Masters champion Angel Cabrera in the traditional ritual in the Butler’s Cabin, the big man confessed to feeling “goose bumps” run right through his body.

In becoming the 73rd US Masters champion, and the first from South America, Cabrera secured his place in golf’s record books as a multi-major winner. When he closed out the US Open at Oakmont in 2007, he did it in regulation; here, at Augusta National, he was forced to go to extra holes and rely on a measure of good luck along the way.

Cabrera rode his luck, and produced the killer blow with a winning par on the second tie hole to defeat Kenny Perry. The other player in the triumvirate chasing major glory, Chad Campbell, had exited at the first play-off hole.

The defining moment in Cabrera’s victory came on the first hole of sudden-death, the 18th. Not long before, in the 72nd hole of regulation, Perry had failed to close the deal there.

His bogey, when a par would have won him the title, left the door ajar for Cabrera and Campbell. But the drama continued on, and it seemed as if Cabrera’s chance had gone when he pushed his tee-shot into the trees and was stymied with no avenue to the green or back to the fairway.

What followed was a high-risk gamble, punching a four-iron through a gap that hardly existed. After he hit the ball, all Cabrera heard was a crack of timber.

The ball had smashed into a tree somewhere ahead. He didn’t know where, and had that look of a scared rabbit caught in the headlights. “It was a very short moment, because I asked my caddie ‘where is it?’. He said, ‘we’re fine, it’s in the fairway’.”

Later, the Green Jacket adorning his barrel-chested frame, Cabrera confessed: “I was lucky. I got a good lie and I still had my chance to make a four.”

What’s more, he did, getting up and down from 72 yards to keep his dream alive.

On the second tie hole, he finished the job. A second major title. How did it feel? “I think the US Open win got me by surprise. This win, I’m prepared. I am more aware of how things happen.”

If there was a sense that this latest major triumph had come out of the blue, with Cabrera only recording one other top-five finish on the US Tour since his US Open win at Oakmont almost two years ago, there was also the feeling that it was his destiny.

Back in 1968, his compatriot Roberto De Vicenzo infamously signed an incorrect scorecard and lost his chance at a play-off to Bob Goalby.

When Cabrera won his US Open title, De Vincenzo presented him with a framed signed photograph. In it, De Vincenzo had a hand on a Green Jacket, and he told Cabrera it may bring him luck.

“This isn’t going to change what happened to him. But taking this championship, this Green Jacket, back to my country will mean a lot to people,” he added.

The vanquished were gracious in defeat. Perry, who had the title in his grasp only to let it slip away, blamed his bogey-bogey finish on an over-eager right hand.

“I can’t stop my right hand when I get a little nervous,” said Perry, who went close in a major before when he lost a play-off to Mark Brooks for the 1996 US PGA.

“If this is the worst thing that happens to me, I can live with it.”

As for Campbell, he remarked: “Angel’s a great player, one of the best drivers of the ball around. He’s long and very straight. He’s one of the longest guys out here (on tour), really under-rated in that category.”

With two career majors in his CV, ranking him alongside the likes of Greg Norman, Cabrera is very much a major player.

His win moved him up 35 places to 41st in the world rankings, and he heads to Bethpage in June as the only player able to win a Grand Slam this year.