Just two weeks after announcing his retirement from club and national team football, Gareth Bale announced this Monday at the stroke of dawn that he will play his first professional golf tournament. “Happy to announce that I will be participating in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am early next month! Let’s go”wrote the Welshman on his official Instagram account.
In this way, the California-based event of the PGA Tour, which will begin next Monday, January 30, and end on February 5will mean the expectant dThe ex-Madridista’s debut as a golfer. The final stretch of his stage as a footballer was marked by an irrepressible passion for golf, symbolized in that “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order ”(Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order) that he exhibited on November 19 on a banner in celebration of the classification of the selection of The Red Dragons to Euro 2020.
“He thinks first of the Wales team, then of golf and then of Madrid. I have not spoken with him, but it is what he transmits to me. You never know if you can count on him, if he’s motivated or not, if he’s injured or not… but you’ll see how he’ll improve when the national teams get closer” Pedja Mijatovic, former player and sports director of Real Madrid, had stated days before in the chain BEon the occasion of the open debate on the implication of the cardiff express after he allegedly left to play golf while Real Madrid were eliminated by Manchester City in the round of 16 of the pandemic Champions League, on August 7, 2020.
Bale, Ambassador of the Royal & Ancient of Saint Andrews
Despite the controversy generated, Bale has never hidden, giving free rein to his passion whenever he can, integrating it with his activity as a professional footballer. In fact, last February he already began to enter the elite of golf, when the Royal & Ancient, the Scottish course where golf was born based in Saint Andrews, appointed him among its new ambassadors. ICM Stellar Sports, the representation agency led by Jonathan Barnett and which managed his federative rights, promised to help spread the game in various campaigns and programs especially aimed at women and young people.
“Golf is an amazing sport and I have always had an ambition to encourage more people to play it.. This is a really exciting move by The R&A and I’m honored to be able to play a role in their effort to inspire people of all ages to try it,” were Bale’s first words as ambassador.
Among the farewells that the Welshman’s football goodbye collected, as a curiosity, ironic allusions to golf were not lacking either: “gasIt’s time to be with your family and lower that handicap,” Aaron Ramsey, one of his inseparable teammates, wrote to him. “Now he can become a fantastic golf player,” said Guardiola for his part. Now, Bale will be able to focus freely to improve that handicap 2 in which his golfer resume stayed.