Ángel Hidalgo turned professional in 2018 when he was just 20 years old. Since then, he has always opted to have a professional caddie in his bag. The more prepared, the better. The man from Málaga is clear that it saves strokes and that any help is little in a world as complex as golf. However, after the Qatar Masters, the tournament that closed the desert swing of the DP World Tour, he ended his relationship with Gonzalo Vicente, a friend as well as a caddie with whom he had been working for two and a half years, achieving, among other things, the Open de España 2024 in Madrid.
Well, while he finds a replacement that fits perfectly with what he is looking for at the moment, he needed a caddie for the week of the Magical Kenya Open, which starts this Thursday at the Karen Country Club in Nairobi. The solution ended up being found close to home, specifically in his family. His uncle Fran will carry the bag.
The story is curious. Fran is the husband of Mamen, the sister of Ángel’s mother. The relationship between the two is splendid, but the truth is that he doesn’t have much knowledge of golf. “I think the only time he set foot on a golf course was at Valderrama, when I got my European Tour card a few years ago,” Hidalgo tells Ten Golf with his usual humorous touch.
But he insists that it is not an exaggeration. “The first time he slung a golf bag over his shoulder in his entire life was last Wednesday at the Real Club de Golf de Sotogrande. In fact, what we did was a test to see if he could endure 18 holes,” he explains. Uncle Fran passed the test with flying colours, although he ended up drenched in sweat. Those who don’t know it don’t have a real idea of the physical effort that the job of a caddie entails.
So, uncle Fran is with Ángel in Kenya. Basically, he is going to carry the bag, not much more. It’s as if Hidalgo is going back in time to his amateur years, back in 2017. “He is forbidden from stepping on the greens and obviously I am going to handle all the course strategy, I have to do the calculations and decide the shots. He just doesn’t know, there’s nothing more to it,” says the Andalusian with a smile.
There is the added difficulty that Hidalgo has never played at the Karen Country Club. He has played the Magical Kenya Open since 2022, but during this time it has always been held at the Muthaiga course. So it’s double the work.
Obviously, the expectations are not the highest this week, the player from Las Brisas clarifies, but at the same time, it is an incentive and an extra motivation to work in Kenya as he did when he had not yet turned professional, making the decision on each and every shot and taking responsibility. The start of the season has not been the most positive and Ángel hopes to turn it around soon. He has played six tournaments, made three cuts (although in two of them, Nedbank and Dubai Invitational there weren’t any) and his best result has been a notable 26th place at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic. He comes from missing two consecutive cuts in Bahrain and Qatar.
