THEOPENROYAL ST GEORGE // 10-17 JULY 2011

INTERNATIONALMAGAZINE

GOLFIN ASSOCIATION WITH

FEATURE BUBBA WATSON

GOLFINTERNATIONALMAG.COM JULY 201192

All his own work: there is nothing ‘textbook’ about theway Bubba goes about hisbuisness – and golf is richerfor his unconventional style

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THEOPENROYAL ST GEORGE'S // 10-17 JULY 2011

Out Of

He is afraid of the dark yet loves the limelight.

Sometimes he aims right and hits the ball left

and sometimes he aims left and hits it right.

His swing is a mass of different movements yet it re-

peats itself as regularly as a Swiss watch. He was

christened Gary yet is known as Bubba. He loves chil-

dren yet has none of his own. He has won millions of

dollars this year alone yet has little idea what is in his

bank account. He once bought a Lamborghini and sold

it shortly after his wife rode in it for the one and only

time. “She didn’t like it,” he said simply.

Meet Bubba Watson, as idiosyncratic a man and

golfer as there is in the game at present. Few hit a golf

ball so far or manoeuvre it as well as he can. This

combination of exceptional vision, unusual power, a

vivid imagination and very rare hand-eye co-ordina-

tion make him to be one of the longest hitters on the

US tour and have contributed to his winning three

tournaments and playing in the Ryder Cup in the past

year, and as a result, to climbing to 11th in the world

rankings (as at May 30.) Add to this that he is relent-

lessly restless, has a child-like enthusiasm, tweets con-

tinually and possibly suffers from attention deficit

disorder (ADD), and the picture emerges of one of the

most unusual men in professional golf.

At Royal St George’s this July Watson, 32, will be

playing in only his third Open. And if it is easy to

guess why he lasted only two rounds at St Andrews

last year (he couldn’t get his putter going) it is more

difficult to work out why he missed the cut at Turn-

berry in 2009. The answer is, having arrived on the

Sunday before the Open, he was immediately quaran-

tined in his hotel room, suspected of having swine

‘flu. He had to stay there until Wednesday afternoon.

“Not much time for practice,” he said, smiling wryly.

Not a normal excuse, that, is it? But there is precious

little that is normal about Watson, a man who has never

had a golf lesson in his life, once won a junior tourna-

ment by 42 strokes, doesn’t drink or smoke, drives very,

very fast cars to the legal speed limits and no faster, has

an average clubhead speed of 128mph, a 44 1/2 inch

long driver and a registered ball speed of nearly 200

mph (nearly 30 mph faster than the average on the US

tour) and is happiest when in the company of children.

“He loves his toys,” Amanda Ausink, a member of Wat-

son’s management team, said. “He has every one known

to man and the biggest child of all is Bubba.”

Watson was born in November 1978 in Bagdad,

Florida, “a two-stop light town outside Pensacola,” ac-

cording to Jens Beck, his manager. He was a hefty

baby, weighing in at more than 11 lbs (which is two lbs

less than Peter Alliss was at birth). Seeing the size and

weight of his son, his father nicknamed him “Bubba”

and Bubba he has been known as since. The name on

his birth certificate is Gerry, which in the US is pro-

nounced Gary.

“What strikes me about Bubba’s character is his in-

tegrity,” Angie Watson, his wife, said. “He won’t tell

even a white lie if he can avoid it. He has a heart the

size of Texas. If it wasn’t for me poking my nose into

our bank account every so often he would have given

away our money to children. Kids love him. We were in

Seattle recently and it was 36 degrees outside and there

was Bubba out there with the kids playing basketball.

“He is witty. He makes me laugh. He is fun to hang

out with. When he plays tennis he hits a lot of drop

shots. He spins the ball all over the place sometimes

so the ball bounces back at him. He likes wake surfing,

wake boarding. He will go at 70 mph on jet skis. He

never ceases to amaze me. We play golf together a lot.

To watch Bubba Watson strike a ball is to witness the jaw-dropping genius of a man who defies all convention. And around the top-10 in the world rankings, there’s more to the big-hitting Floridian thanmeets the eye, as John Hopkinsdiscovered when hetalked to him at the recent Players’ Championship

LEftfiELd

FEATURE BUBBA WATSON

GOLFINTERNATIONALMAG.COM JULY 201194

He can hook it three yards or 60 yards. He doesn’t get stressed

about things. He pays his bills on time. He is impatient with

bad drivers. He practises more than he lets on but he is not the

sort who will beat 6-irons for 30 minutes.”

Watson’s position at the address is unconventional. His feet

often point southeast, his body northeast. Then his ball starts

out to the northeast before swerving in the air sometimes as

much as 30 yards to end on target. He moves his feet during the

swing and they slide one towards the other after impact and

often end up pointing in a different direction to the one they

were pointing at the start of the swing. After Watson’s ball has

left the clubface, he goes through a quick ritual, bending his

body this way and that as if he is trying to influence its flight. He

twirls his club and leans to one side or the other. Sometimes he

stands, one leg raised, like a stork, for 10 seconds or so.

He moves the ball in the air not just on the occasional stroke

but on all strokes and it is this desire to take what other play-

ers and instructors see as risks with his swing in order to gain

this ball movement that makes them suggest his swing will al-

ways be occasionally suspect under pressure.

To Watson, though, hitting the ball the way he does is safe

and correct not dangerous and incorrect. “It all comes down to

the half inch or so on either side of impact,” Watson said. “For

me, if I know I’m coming in and going to hook it this way or cut

it the other way, it is easy for me to get into that position. On

the golf course I see shapes. I attack the pin if the pin’s on the

left, cut it in there. If the pin is on the right, draw it in there. To

hit a straight shot your body has to be straight on. That is hard

for me. There are occasions when I have to hit a straight ball,

but it’s a harder shot. In fact, it’s the hardest shot in golf.

“My timing is good. I hit the ball dead centre of the club-

face,” Watson continued. “That helps with power. I am not very

strong obviously. I am skinny. (Although once two stone heav-

ier, he has now slimmed down and his 13 stone is spread

evenly around his 6ft 3inch frame.) I am not a muscular man. I

use my arc to generate clubhead speed and my timing to get

my body, my arms and everything in the right position to hit

the ball in the dead centre of the clubface. That is what creates

the power for me. The fact that I finish off balance doesn’t

matter. When the club hits the ball I am pretty good. I am on

balance. Look at Gary Player. He walks after the ball. Bobby

Jones used to pick up his front foot going back and his back

foot coming down.

“Growing up I learned to play with plastic balls. Every day

for at least 14 years I would hit plastic balls, even in the rain,

because I loved it so much. I learned every type of shot possi-

ble, high and low hooks, high and low fades. We have big trees

in Bagdad so I had to hit it low, over limbs, under limbs. I went

around the house the one way so it was a cut for me. I went

around the house another way so it was a draw for me.”

Teddy Scott, his caddie, was a professional golfer good

enough to record a handful of competitive rounds in the mid-

60s, so is well-placed to assess Watson’s shot-making. “Certain

people are gifted with remarkable hand-eye co-ordination and

Bubba is one of those,” Scott said. “If you play anything with

Bubba, even if he has never done it before, he’s really good at

it. He is not worried how it looks. He is not trying to make his

swing seem perfect. He is using hand-eye co-ordination and his

talent. Every week he will hit a shot that will make me go

‘Whoa, I can’t even comprehend that.’ He is a freak.”

“It's an interesting swing, that’s for sure,” Denis Pugh said.

“Bubba reminds me of Monty who used to say to me ‘Don’t

watch me when I’m playing badly because I will probably know

what I’m doing wrong. Watch me when I’m playing well and

note what it is that is good and tell me so I can concentrate on

that and try and repeat it’.”

Just as distinctive is the distance Watson hits the ball. He

has a 420-yard drive to his credit from when he was playing on

While he may not be a particularly big or strong guy, Bubba’s 6’ 3” framegenerates a swingspeed approaching130 mph and a ball speed of nearly200 mph with his 7.5-degree driver – “it all comes down to the half inch orso either side of impact,” he says, rather matter-of-factly. Below: With caddie, friend and occasional mentor, Teddy Scott

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FEATURE BUBBA WATSON

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the Nationwide Tour. The tour’s longest-hitter these past three

years, Watson keeps his distance in check, unleashing it rarely.

In the first round of this year’s Players Championship, he was

playing with Luke Donald. On the 18th, facing the water and

with a natural tendency to slice, Watson went after his drive,

hitting it 30 yards past Donald’s. “That’s 330,” a spectator

gushed admiringly. “That’s what the man from SHOTLink [a

measuring device] said.” Later Donald noted that Watson

needed only a sand-wedge to reach the green on the hole that

actually measured 469 yards that day. “He is impressive off the

tee,” Donald said. “It must be nice to have a weapon like he

does, the ability to hit the ball a long way, and shape it the way

he does.”

In the Sony Open on Maui in Hawaii earlier this year, Watson

played a shot that Scott says is one of the best he has ever seen.

It is already talked as being the PGA Tour’s Shot of the Year.

“On the 18th, we had 308 yards to the flag on a downslope,”

Scott said. “I could maybe have got a 3-iron off the ground, the

ground was so steep. There was a right-t- left wind. His driver

has a 7.5 degrees of loft and he has to bend it 40 yards to get it

round a hazard. We are standing there looking at the shot and

you know what? He said to me: ‘You think driver off the deck?’

“I did a double-take. I said to him: ‘I have no idea what you’re

asking me but if you think you can do it then do it because I

have seen you hit shots that I didn’t think were possible.’ He hit

it to ten feet and tapped it in for an eagle. People have been

talking about it ever since.”

Watson smiled at the memory. “On a scale of 10 it had a de-

gree of difficulty of 9.5, easily,” he said. “With that lie you could

easily hit it low and go into the hazard. I had to try and get it into

the air somehow. I could see the shot in my head. I could picture

it landing short and rolling the way it did but to bring it off was

pretty cool. And then to hole the putt – wow!”

In some ways Watson is a typical American golfer, who at-

tended college, went on to university where he was an outstand-

ing golfer and then turned pro and worked his way upwards in

the game. But in one area at least he is most untypical.

Watson’s parents were not well-off. They could not afford to

give him membership of a local country club and private les-

sons. His father, who had been a Green Beret in the US Special

Forces, retired from the military and took a job at a local power

plant in Pensacola for 32 years. He left home at six in the morn-

ing and got home at six at night. His mother had two jobs. “She

had a paper round for which she got up at 3 am and got home

at 5 or 5.30 am. She would wake us up, get us ready for school

and take us to school. She would go on to her normal job,

which was as a credit clerk. She took her lunch break at 2 or

2.30 so she could pick us up from school and then she went

back to work for two hours. They were two hard-working peo-

ple whose kids meant the world to them. When I cry after win-

ning a tournament my tears are for them and what they have

provided for me. They showed their love for me and my sister

by the hard work they did to provide for us.

“Dad was a military man. He had a real hard exterior and

tried to act like he was tougher than he was. He did spank me.

But after I was about 7 he would threaten me by saying: ‘Don’t

ever make me give you a spanking’ and I used to start laughing

after I realised he was not going to whip me any more. Mom

would threaten me with my Dad. ‘Dad’s going to give you a

whipping when he gets home,’ she would say.

“Dad taught me integrity. It means not believing you’re any

better than anyone else. Don’t expect much. Word hard. Don’t

lie. Don’t belittle or bad-mouth people on the way. He said to

me: ‘You have two options growing up. You can be a follower

or a leader. You don’t want to be a follower because then you

will be copying everyone else. Whatever you do in life do it your

own way.’ I play golf my own way. I am a leader. I don’t care

what everybody else says.”

There was one time though when Watson paid attention to

what other people were saying. It came in May 2010 and it

changed his life. For all Watson's charm off the course, his ap-

peal to children, his light-hearted, let’s have fun attitude when

he was not playing golf, there were moments when he got

down on himself so badly on the course that he become diffi-

cult to be around. “I was poutin’, mumblin’, talking about how

terrible I was at golf,” Watson said. “Outside the golf course I

was everybody’s friend. I never had a mean bone in my body.

Inside the ropes I was acting like an immature kid. Inside the

ropes from when I was about to tee off on number one until I

get to walk off number 18 I was miserable. I was mad, thinking

I should be in the top-10 in the world, thinking I should be win-

ning. I didn’t want to be there. It is a blessing to play the PGA

Tour and I knew that but inside the ropes I wasn’t thinking that

Wife Angie takes the mic’ at the conclusion of the Travelers Championship last June, a victoryWatson dedicated to his father in his battle with lung cancer (He passed away just fourmonths later.) A Ryder Cup appearance rounded off the 2010 season, while two further victories – at the Farmers Insurance Open, Torrey Pines (below left) and the Zurich Classic ofNew Orleans – consolidated Bubba’s position in the upper echelons of world golf

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way. I was immature. I had had four years of playing [pro] golf

and playing bad golf. Angie noticed it. She was upset with the

me who was on the golf course because I wasn’t the same per-

son I was off it.”

It came to a head in May 2010 when Scott, tired of Watson’s

excessiveness, threatened to stop caddying for him. This was

no easy task. He and Watson had worked together since Sep-

tember 2006 and, fellow Christians, had become good friends.

It took Scott time to work out what to say – and time to sum-

mon the nerve to say it. After all, he thought he might be fired.

But then one night over dinner just after Watson had failed to

qualify for the US Open, he blurted it out and said he was

going to quit if Watson did not change his attitude.

“He was overreacting to everything,” Scott said. “He could hit

it to ten feet and be mad that it didn’t go in the hole. What

prompted me to say something was pain. I’d had four weeks in

a row that were really, really tough. He was playing well and get-

ting nothing out of it and it was all because he chose to overre-

act. When you put that much stress on yourself, you can’t play

golf. You have to be relaxed, commit yourself to the shot and

then detach. If you take those bad vibes to the next shot then it

just keeps on building and you can’t play golf. That was what I

saw. A guy who would start playing well and then self-destruct.

“If you don’t care about someone you look at them and say

‘What an idiot’ but when you care about someone it is painful. It

is like watching your son or brother self-destruct. I said to

Bubba: ‘I am going to tell you something. I can’t let you do this

anymore and if you want to keep doing it then I can’t work for

you because I am miserable. It is the hardest thing I have ever

done in my life and I have no idea how you are going to respond

but I need to tell you; I have had a couple of caddies come up to

me and say you are a maniac and that hurts me because I want

to defend you but I can’t because you are being a maniac.’

“It could have been the stress of his Dad getting cancer

[Watson’s father died in October 2010] or spectators who were

saying ‘Man, when are you going to win?’ Who knows? It was

very difficult for me. At night, I was like, man, I hate going to

work and I don’t want to hate going to work. I wanted to look

forward to it, to doing the best I could.”

To his credit Watson accepted what Scott said. “Teddy was

right,” Watson said. “It was right for him to kick me in the butt.

It took courage. For him to come to me and say that, knowing

that he was making great money and that he could have been

fired and that great money goes away, that was a big step. Six

months later we were on the Ryder Cup team. We’d had a win.

Then we were at the highest we had ever been in the world

ranking. Now we’ve had three wins, the Ryder Cup and all

these great things.”

Watson settled back in his seat, a smile on his face. There

was a contentment in his brown eyes. He had sat still and con-

centrated hard for 40 minutes and it was a reminder that

though it is said that he suffers from ADD he himself is keen

to point out that he has not been diagnosed with it. At this mo-

ment he looked the very model of a modern golf professional,

what with his sunglasses pushed up above his Ping visor, his

Richard Mille watch on his right wrist, his FootJoy golf shoes

and the Travis Matthews clothes. It was the end of the inter-

view and he looked as though he felt he had given a good ac-

count of himself. He had given his best.

Scott, who was not present, would have been proud of him.