Ángel Hidalgo doesn’t by any means have his finger on the red button. No, it’s not that serious. But he does have the key to the drawer where the red button is. That’s one way to describe his current situation. Losing his card doesn’t keep him awake at night, among other things because there’s still plenty more to play for, but he does admit his situation worries him. Ángel is like Fede Valverde. Like Marcos Llorente. He doesn’t dodge the issue, he always tries to play and speaks with a personal, brave stance that’s appreciated. He sits down with TenGolf and bares his soul
“I know it’s not the start of the season nor the last year or so I would have wanted, but well, it’s very easy to end up saying I’m calm, everything will come, the work, blah, blah, blah… Yes, I’m worried. I’m optimistic, but also realistic at the same time. I’m not stupid. I know I’m a bit on a tightrope, in the sense of: hey, don’t lose focus. I have my days when I get a big dip, when I think what’s happening, why things aren’t coming out…”, he says with absolute honesty. However, for now he has no intention of pressing the red button, partly because he’s made a wise decision: he’s going to do everything he can and go as far as he can. He won’t reproach himself for anything
“I’m going to bed fairly calm, that’s the most important thing. I can’t do much more than what I’m doing. In the end it’s about keeping training, keeping giving myself the chance to go to bed knowing that that day I’ve worked as I should, and leaving it and waiting for an opportunity to come and taking it”, he points out
The work isn’t negotiable and, besides, he’s doing it with joy, even enthusiasm. “We arrive early with Álvaro Alonso (his caddie) and leave last. I mean, I’ve closed the practice ranges many days these last weeks in India and China. But what I like is that it’s coming from me, you know? Even he is saying to me ‘let’s go’. I’m very competitive, I hate losing, and I probably play the sport that is lost the most in the world. But at the same time I think it gives very good rewards if you have the chance to grab them and make the most of them”
Hidalgo is right at that moment of seizing that opportunity. He argues that in two years he’s only had two really good tournaments and won one, the Open de España in a playoff with Jon Rahm, and he almost took the Open de Irlanda. He trusts that instinct and that the opportunity will come sooner or later. “That’s why they’ve always compared me a lot with Pablo Larrazábal. I mean, if I’m on the leaderboard on a Sunday, the only one I don’t want to see is Pablo. And I want to think —which I don’t know if it is— that people aren’t comfortable either if they see me. We’re players who will miss a lot of cuts, who will finish a lot in 63 after making the cut and you say: my God, what a weekend I had. But we have that feeling of saying: if on Sunday we’re around there… We’re so ourselves that in the end people are very uncomfortable when there’s a lot of pressure or whatever. So we keep playing the same. Huge respect for Pablo, whom I love to bits, but in the end it’s about trying to be around on Saturday afternoon, 3rd, 4th, and go out on Sunday at 3 or 4… When you’re in that scramble, it’s amazing. I think it was in Ireland, I told Win (his caddie at the time)… We were tied with Rory or something, and I said: ‘Mate, right now I think I’m Spiderman, because I’m feeling things in my veins here, man, like I could shoot a web and something would come out.’ And I enjoy it a lot, and I know myself, and I know how I have to breathe, I know I have to calm the body, I know I’m going to hit it further… Because in my fucking life I’m never going to get the ball to land on the 18th green at Club de Campo like that again. It’s impossible for it to bounce there again. But it’s that extra that competition gives you”, he says referring to the playoff with Jon Rahm in 2024
Ángel has activated Fernando Alonso mode. That means you have to be all ears when the opportunity appears. “You have to try to add up when you can out there, to have a bit of a scramble up front and play to your strengths, and obviously I know when I can be competitive. I know there are courses where I can’t be competitive, obviously, or less so. But that’s the direction we’re heading.” And he cites the following courses: “we had India, which was one of the good ones, but Belgium, Holland, Madrid, Belfry are still to come…”
That said, while the opportunity appears or not, Hidalgo knows he has to change the mindset. It means he must get used to playing under par. He’s finding it hard to string together rounds under par. Not 67 or 68, but 70, 71. That’s the one-under-par trance his head is stuck in. “I’m finding it very hard to go under par. It’s about adding rounds under par, obviously there will be rounds of +2, +3, of course, but to link two or three one-under-pars in a row. To get back to that feeling. Right now my feeling is that I need four good shots to make a birdie and one bad one to make a bogey”, he says
This situation has a very large mental component. “Yes, yes, and it hurts my soul to go out on Sunday in 60th place for the 10th hole at half past eleven in the morning and the marquee match goes out at 12, and you cross paths at 13 and the marquee match is on 10, all lovely, with people, with the sign, the leaderboard here… and not even my mum is watching me. I’m there, having just hit a terrible shot into the middle of the trees, and well, that’s basically it. I don’t know if training so much is also creating expectations. Jacobo sums it up very well: I start to think that because I train, golf owes me something. And golf is what it is, it’s the exact opposite. And when you have the feeling of saying ‘I have it, right now I’m in control’, that’s when it hits you”
Hidalgo has his roadmap clear. Everything starts with playing under par, then waiting for the big opportunity, which will come, he has no doubts, and meanwhile working at full throttle to be ready when it arrives. As long as things stay like this, the red button will remain very peacefully tucked away in the drawer, no need to press it. His situation isn’t that desperate either. Without having his best season, he’s inside the top 100 of the Race. So lots of calm and keep wearing the shirts of Valverde and Llorente. “I’d have brought him back to Madrid with my eyes closed”, he concludes
