Ex-UGA golfer jolts PGA Tour with prodigious tee shots
By THOMAS STINSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/29/06
La Jolla, Calif. ? The future of professional golf has never taken a lesson, doesn't have a swing guru, uses a pink-shafted driver and boldly slams the ball where no man has gone before. He is left-handed, would sooner burp than exercise, defines himself as "New Age redneck," swings harder than Thor, and, chances are, you don't know his name.
He is Gerry Watson. But call him Bubba and feel the PGA Tour shiver.
A former UGA teammate has said that when told the school's new fitness regimen would include yoga, Watson declared: 'Hey coach, I'm not religious.'
"Honestly, in all seriousness," said Tiger Woods, "that is the future of the game of golf."
"Oh, I can't ever come close to the unsightly distances that Bubba Watson hits it," said Phil Mickelson, suddenly no longer the longest lefty on the Tour. ". . . I think he's got to win pretty soon. This guy can really play. It's not just the long game that he plays. He can really play."
"What I've always said about Bubba," said Chris Haack, his old coach at the University of Georgia, "is if he got his chance and had some success, he was going to be another John Daly."
Of course, this playing just his second event a PGA Tour member. And there have been times at the Buick Open this week he needed a sextant to find his way back to the fairways at Torrey Pines. But these are heady times nevertheless.
"Sad," he said. "That a guy named Bubba could be the future of the Tour."
And he is funny too, a whiff of nitrous oxide for a business that misplaced its sense of humor about the time Lee Trevino got his AARP card. Towing respectable galleries for such a rookie, Watson shot a 70 Friday, reaching the midpoint of the Buick tied for 53rd at 2-under par, 10 shots behind leader Brandt Jobe.
A long shot? The longest. After all, he never won in 64 career tries down on the Nationwide Tour. He only earned for his Tour card through some tricky math. He even lost his slot on Georgia's team his senior year.
But age 27 now and possessing the longest game out here, this is the Age of Bubba rising. Consider yourself warned.
"Three weeks ago, nobody cared which Bubba was which," he said. "But it's exciting because this is what I've wanted to do, this is what I've worked hard at.
"It might not look like it on the range. Even though I only hit 10 balls on the range, I still work hard on those 10 balls."
'I don't have that shot'
Most everyone already seems to have a Did You See Where Bubba Hit It story. And that was before two weeks ago, en route to a back-side 30 in the final round of the SONY Open, when he clubbed a 398-yarder on the 12th hole, helping to deliver him to a fourth-place finish in his Tour debut.
Two years ago, at the Gila River Classic on the Nationwide Tour, Watson hit a tour-record 422-yard drive. At last winter's Dunlop Phoenix tournament at Miyazaki, Japan, Woods was pondering whether his 3-wood could reach the trap fronting the green on the 323-yard 13th hole, when Watson pulled out a 1-iron and bounced the ball onto the putting surface.
Said Woods, "I don't have that shot."
Mickelson, visiting his caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay when he used to live in Athens, found himself several years ago playing with Watson, then still at Georgia, at Athens Country Club. Watson recalls Mickelson at one point extolling the invincibility of his new Callaway and Watson then out-driving him by 10 yards. Mickelson better remembers the taunting of a this college kid.
"He'd say, 'Did you get all of that one?' Stuff like that, but well warranted," Mickelson said. "I couldn't hang with him."
"I never try to club him," said Jim Ritterbeck, an old friend from back home in Pensacola, Fla. who caddies for Watson. "It's impossible. . . . In a tournament in Utah, he hit a 6-iron 250 yards. In Midland (Tex.), he hit a 6-iron 242 yards out of a trap, uphill. I've seen him hit a pitching wedge 170. He has so much talent, has all the shots."
Watson still has the same swing thought that his father passed along when he gave him his first club ? a cut-down 9-iron ? at age five: "Hit it as hard as you can." The boy would draw a five-foot circle in the dirt driveway at the family home in Bagdad in the Florida panhandle, and slash wiffle golf balls around and over the house, learning to power-draw and fade with equal cunning.
Grown to 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds, Watson's swing has grown into a big, violent thing, his take-back going so far past parallel that sometimes, his clubhead faces the ground. He habitually plays 30-yard hooks and fades because, he explains, they are easier for him than the subtler shots. The straight ball still eludes him and to hear his description of how it all works suggests an act of hostility.
"They say that it's because I use my arc, my long arms, and I use every bit of it," Watson said. "I have a little bit of a cut but I can twist pretty good and it just recoils really fast at impact. It's just one of those things that just happened to work out. I do everything it takes to hit it hard and somehow, I do it."
Watson began the week leading the Tour with a 336.3-yard driving average. Only one player in Tour history ? Hank Kuehne ? has ever averaged better than 320 for a season (321.4 yards three years ago). Watson was 2005 co-leader of the Nationwide Tour at 334 yards, after averaging 323.5 yards the year before. With a pink graphite-shafted Ping driver.
"I struggled with it for a little while but then I found he can hit it the way he does," said his wife Angie Ball Watson, a former Bulldogs basketball player who met her Bubba-to-be during his senior year in Athens. "I say that jokingly but he loves to be different. That's the reason I fell in love with him. He's not your average guy."
So not average, that the compulsion is to compare him to the Tour's only other long-swatting, irreverent Southerner ? John Daly. And that would be a big mistake. The two have never met, much less played together but, aside from their intergalactic range off the tee and their SEC routes, the two men could not be more different.
"No, I don't drink," Watson said. "I don't hunt. I've never been camping, never done any of that stuff. I don't drink beer. I've never been drunk. I've never partied, never done any of that. And NASCAR is not my thing."
A natural Bubba
Gerry Watson defaulted to Bubba before he ever had a chance.
"I'd say 10 seconds after I was born, my dad said I was fat and ugly," Watson said. "So let's call him Bubba."
By THOMAS STINSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/29/06
La Jolla, Calif. ? The future of professional golf has never taken a lesson, doesn't have a swing guru, uses a pink-shafted driver and boldly slams the ball where no man has gone before. He is left-handed, would sooner burp than exercise, defines himself as "New Age redneck," swings harder than Thor, and, chances are, you don't know his name.
He is Gerry Watson. But call him Bubba and feel the PGA Tour shiver.
A former UGA teammate has said that when told the school's new fitness regimen would include yoga, Watson declared: 'Hey coach, I'm not religious.'
"Honestly, in all seriousness," said Tiger Woods, "that is the future of the game of golf."
"Oh, I can't ever come close to the unsightly distances that Bubba Watson hits it," said Phil Mickelson, suddenly no longer the longest lefty on the Tour. ". . . I think he's got to win pretty soon. This guy can really play. It's not just the long game that he plays. He can really play."
"What I've always said about Bubba," said Chris Haack, his old coach at the University of Georgia, "is if he got his chance and had some success, he was going to be another John Daly."
Of course, this playing just his second event a PGA Tour member. And there have been times at the Buick Open this week he needed a sextant to find his way back to the fairways at Torrey Pines. But these are heady times nevertheless.
"Sad," he said. "That a guy named Bubba could be the future of the Tour."
And he is funny too, a whiff of nitrous oxide for a business that misplaced its sense of humor about the time Lee Trevino got his AARP card. Towing respectable galleries for such a rookie, Watson shot a 70 Friday, reaching the midpoint of the Buick tied for 53rd at 2-under par, 10 shots behind leader Brandt Jobe.
A long shot? The longest. After all, he never won in 64 career tries down on the Nationwide Tour. He only earned for his Tour card through some tricky math. He even lost his slot on Georgia's team his senior year.
But age 27 now and possessing the longest game out here, this is the Age of Bubba rising. Consider yourself warned.
"Three weeks ago, nobody cared which Bubba was which," he said. "But it's exciting because this is what I've wanted to do, this is what I've worked hard at.
"It might not look like it on the range. Even though I only hit 10 balls on the range, I still work hard on those 10 balls."
'I don't have that shot'
Most everyone already seems to have a Did You See Where Bubba Hit It story. And that was before two weeks ago, en route to a back-side 30 in the final round of the SONY Open, when he clubbed a 398-yarder on the 12th hole, helping to deliver him to a fourth-place finish in his Tour debut.
Two years ago, at the Gila River Classic on the Nationwide Tour, Watson hit a tour-record 422-yard drive. At last winter's Dunlop Phoenix tournament at Miyazaki, Japan, Woods was pondering whether his 3-wood could reach the trap fronting the green on the 323-yard 13th hole, when Watson pulled out a 1-iron and bounced the ball onto the putting surface.
Said Woods, "I don't have that shot."
Mickelson, visiting his caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay when he used to live in Athens, found himself several years ago playing with Watson, then still at Georgia, at Athens Country Club. Watson recalls Mickelson at one point extolling the invincibility of his new Callaway and Watson then out-driving him by 10 yards. Mickelson better remembers the taunting of a this college kid.
"He'd say, 'Did you get all of that one?' Stuff like that, but well warranted," Mickelson said. "I couldn't hang with him."
"I never try to club him," said Jim Ritterbeck, an old friend from back home in Pensacola, Fla. who caddies for Watson. "It's impossible. . . . In a tournament in Utah, he hit a 6-iron 250 yards. In Midland (Tex.), he hit a 6-iron 242 yards out of a trap, uphill. I've seen him hit a pitching wedge 170. He has so much talent, has all the shots."
Watson still has the same swing thought that his father passed along when he gave him his first club ? a cut-down 9-iron ? at age five: "Hit it as hard as you can." The boy would draw a five-foot circle in the dirt driveway at the family home in Bagdad in the Florida panhandle, and slash wiffle golf balls around and over the house, learning to power-draw and fade with equal cunning.
Grown to 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds, Watson's swing has grown into a big, violent thing, his take-back going so far past parallel that sometimes, his clubhead faces the ground. He habitually plays 30-yard hooks and fades because, he explains, they are easier for him than the subtler shots. The straight ball still eludes him and to hear his description of how it all works suggests an act of hostility.
"They say that it's because I use my arc, my long arms, and I use every bit of it," Watson said. "I have a little bit of a cut but I can twist pretty good and it just recoils really fast at impact. It's just one of those things that just happened to work out. I do everything it takes to hit it hard and somehow, I do it."
Watson began the week leading the Tour with a 336.3-yard driving average. Only one player in Tour history ? Hank Kuehne ? has ever averaged better than 320 for a season (321.4 yards three years ago). Watson was 2005 co-leader of the Nationwide Tour at 334 yards, after averaging 323.5 yards the year before. With a pink graphite-shafted Ping driver.
"I struggled with it for a little while but then I found he can hit it the way he does," said his wife Angie Ball Watson, a former Bulldogs basketball player who met her Bubba-to-be during his senior year in Athens. "I say that jokingly but he loves to be different. That's the reason I fell in love with him. He's not your average guy."
So not average, that the compulsion is to compare him to the Tour's only other long-swatting, irreverent Southerner ? John Daly. And that would be a big mistake. The two have never met, much less played together but, aside from their intergalactic range off the tee and their SEC routes, the two men could not be more different.
"No, I don't drink," Watson said. "I don't hunt. I've never been camping, never done any of that stuff. I don't drink beer. I've never been drunk. I've never partied, never done any of that. And NASCAR is not my thing."
A natural Bubba
Gerry Watson defaulted to Bubba before he ever had a chance.
"I'd say 10 seconds after I was born, my dad said I was fat and ugly," Watson said. "So let's call him Bubba."
