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Bubba Golf and the crying game

Welcome to Bubba Golf.

No lessons required.

Bring a green jacket.

With a swoop and a swash, left-hander Bubba Watson realised the ambition of every professional golfer on Sunday night when he won the Masters at the age of 33, in his 17th major start and on his fourth trip to Augusta National.

Unlike every other professional golfer, Watson did it in unique fashion, relying on a combination of his raw athleticism, his untutored golfing ability and an incredible feel for shot-making.

“As an athlete, as a golfer, this is the Mecca. This is what we strive for, to put on the green jacket, to win golf tournaments,” said Watson, having defeated classic golfing stylist Louis Oosthuizen at the second hole of a sudden-death play-off.

Athlete first, golfer second. It may just have been the way the words fell out of his mouth in the brain-scrambling, emotional aftermath of a momentous sporting achievement but it points more than a little to the Watson mindset.

An attitude encapsulated perfectly when microphones picked up his reaction to a very long but misdirected tee shot during an early round this week. “Ohhhh shoot,” Watson said before admiring his work and adding with a shrug, “killed it though”.

“We always joked about Bubba Golf,” he said on Sunday night. “My caddie [Ted Scott] has always called it Bubba Golf. We always say it walking down fairways. I just play the game, the game that I love. And truthfully, it’s like Seve played. He hit shots that were unbelievable. Phil Mickelson hits the shot, he goes for it.

“If you watch Phil Mickelson, he goes for broke. And that’s why he wins so many times. That’s why he’s not afraid. So for me that’s what I do. I just play golf. I attack. I always attack. I don’t like to go to the centre of the greens. I want to hit the incredible shot; who doesn’t? That’s why we play the game of golf, to pull off the amazing shot.”

That is exactly what Watson did at the second play-off hole, the 10th, having just missed a putt at the 18th that could have won him the Masters. His tee shot was not good and he watched his ball career right and into the pines for the second time that day.

When he got to it, it was lying on pine straw with no direct route to the green below and he was facing a narrow 40-yard long chute back out onto the fairway. He was 135 yards from the front of the green, 164 from the hole. In Bubba Golf that called for a 52-degree wedge and a hook around the wall of foliage and spectators onto the green for the putts that would make him champion.

“The first time I ever worked with my caddie, six years ago, I told him, ‘If I have a swing, I’ve got a shot’. So I’m used to the woods. I’m used to the rough.

“I got there. I saw it was a perfect draw; a perfect hook. And he said, ‘If you’ve got a swing, you’ve got a shot’.

“That’s what we did. I hit my gap wedge, hooked it about 40 yards, hit about 15 feet off the ground until it got under the tree and then started rising. Pretty easy.”

So how far can Bubba Golf go?

“The ceiling? Major Champion, think I’m done, right? I mean, can’t do any better than this.

“You know, if I go get me lessons and change my swing tomorrow; I’ve won four times and won a major. So, who knows? That’s the best part about history, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know the future. We don’t know anything. Hopefully I keep crying. Hopefully I keep having the passion to play golf and keep doing what I’m doing.”

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