“Play them half machine Fifi…” Walter Becerra laughs in an attempt to mask his shyness, as he walks towards the start of hole 1 at the General Roca Golf Club to play an internal tournament looking for resources to help you meet a challenge you never imagined.
It is that from one day to the next this 35-year-old golfer, born and raised in the populous neighborhood of La Ribera, He became a kind of celebrity in the club, not only for having been the first Roquense to qualify for a National tournament, but also because in that competition won the right to participate in the Nations Cup in the Golf Channel Latin American Championship, to be played from the 10th to the 13th of this month at the Iberostar Playa Paraíso Golf Club, Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Walter is the son of Miguel, who cuts the grass and conditions the course of the Roca Golf Club since its inception 28 years ago. “This was a sandbank… It was only after almost two years, when the grass began to grow, that he was able to play here. My son, who was about 11 years old, was always with me and almost as fun he began to play”Miguel tells Black riverwho also hits the ball and is part of the group that accompanies Walter on the 9-hole round of the tournament that the members organized to help with the trip.
“This classifying the Latin American was totally unexpected. If my son before going to the Nacional de Luján, the farthest he had gone to play was Neuquén”.
Walter was a caddy for the first members who came to play on the brand new course. His reward was to borrow some sticks and play. Not only on the brand new lawn of the club. “One day my old man made us a stick of iron and lead, and we played with the neighborhood boys on a dirt court. that we had set up in the back of the racetrack, which is attached to La Ribera. We took out the weeds, the stones, we cleaned it well and we played there”.
Walter agrees that these unsuitable conditions helped his sensitivity to hit the ball and that everything flows differently because when you’re a kid, any sport is just a game, and that’s where you learn most of the secrets.
“We used to live in that little house…”, Becerra points out towards a building that is attached to the club’s confectionery, as if to make clear the level of belonging with the place and with its neighborhood next to the river, both Ribera and Mosconi, where resides today.
“The truth is that I am very happy and very grateful to everyone. In the club, in the neighborhood… It was a lot of things at once. After winning in Luján, they gave me a great surprise reception in Ribera. We were like 20…my whole family, my wife and our two children. They even made me a cake in the shape of a golf course.”
-Were you done with winning the Regional Qualifier and going to Luján?
– Yes, sure. Knowing that course (Las Praderas Golf Club, headquarters of the National) was already done. It is a very nice place to play. Nor did I imagine that I was going to qualify for Mexico, since I practically went without training because of my job. I can only come to the club on Saturdays.
– What is your job?
– I am a gardener.
Walter learned the trade as a boy with his father, with whom he worked for a while at the golf club where he is now a member. Then they started gardening together. “I maintain parks and gardens in Roca, where many of my clients come to play here. Everyone congratulated me when I won in Luján, and several are here now playing this tournament so that I can travel”.
Due to his life story and his origins, Becerra breaks down certain prejudices that speak of an elite reserved for practicing sports. “It’s all fake. Here at the club we are all the same, all kinds of people come, regardless of their social class”.
Walter is grateful and says that they were generous with him when he started golf. “When I was just starting out, several of my patrons taught me many of the secrets of the game. In my days as a caddy I studied his movements, the swing and stuff”.
– And now you teach them…
– (Laughter…) Occasionally someone consults me…
Walter has a deep, scratchy voice, almost like a blues singer. Although he was not always the same. “When he was a boy he had a finite voice, after he grew up he changed me. That’s why they call me Fifi as a kid, which was a cartoon. I had a similar timbre of voice to the character.
Within a couple of weeks, Walter’s life changed completely. Today he is the pride of the neighborhood and also of a club that literally saw him born. “He grew along with all the trees that are here on the field,” says his father. Everything came to him at once, even having to get on a plane. “I only traveled once, it was to go see Boca in Buenos Aires. Now for Mexico it will be the second.”
Starting tomorrow Becerra will be one of the three players of the Argentine team in the Latin American, who prevailed in the National about 133 golfers from seven provinces and 67 clubs from all over the country. In the first selection, through 53 qualifying tournaments, there were 5,600 registered players with the intention of reaching the tournament played in Las Praderas de Luján.
Walter leaves today for Mexico, there he will make contact with his teammates and since Tuesday, almost 8,000 kilometers away, An entire neighborhood will be watching how Fifi is doing, a gardener who took to playing golf. And he does not do bad.
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