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Bubba Watson’s driver: where golf balls go to fly

Watch out, Pebble Beach. All the distance-deflating weapons in the arsenal — chilly February air, soggy fairways, long rounds in which even the biggest power hitters become restless and stiff — might not be enough this time.
Or put another way: Here comes Bubba.
His given name is Gerry (pronounced Gary), but he always has been known as Bubba Watson. That seems like an apt moniker for the newest revelation on the PGA Tour, a player/circus act/stand-up comedian who launches golf balls farther than Tiger Woods, farther than John Daly, farther than just about any pro on the planet.
Watson, 27, burst onto the scene at the Sony Open in Honolulu earlier this month. He averaged 336 yards off the tee in that tournament — one drive traveled a mind-blowing 398 yards — on the way to finishing fourth in his first event since he earned his card.
Then again, the ball carries well in Hawaii. That’s seldom the case at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which begins Feb. 9 amid the notoriously mild climate of the Monterey Peninsula. Watson, who will play in the AT&T, seems distinctly unconcerned about the possible effects on his game.
“If I hit it short up there, that means everybody will hit it short,” he said at Torrey Pines, site of the Buick Invitational.
No less an authority than Woods called Watson “the future of the game,” given his prodigious distance. Watson flashed his goofy smile upon hearing this, saying, “That’s sad, a guy named Bubba could be the future.”
He adeptly mixes bravado and self-deprecation into an entertaining package. But Watson’s signature is clearly the way he uncoils his broad-shouldered, long-armed, 6-foot-3, 180-pound frame, mashing the ball into distant galaxies.
Watson, a left-hander, led the Nationwide Tour last year with an average driving distance of 334 yards. He smacked one drive 422 yards in 2004. Four of his drives exceeded 360 yards during his final-round 65 at the Sony, a buzz-stirring display in which he deliberately shaped many of those shots around trees and doglegs.
Phil Mickelson saw this coming, because he used to play an occasional round with Watson and his University of Georgia teammates. Mickelson’s caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, once lived in Athens, Ga., so Mickelson and Mackay would hook up with the Bulldogs’ golf team before the Masters or Tour Championship.
Even then, Watson outdrove Mickelson — and chided him about it. Mickelson had no problem with Watson’s good-natured gloating because the kid backed it up.
“Oh, I can’t even come close to the unsightly distances Bubba hits it,” Mickelson said. “It seems like he’s able to overpower a lot of courses. I think he’s got to win pretty soon. It’s not just the long game; this guy can really play.”
Watson grew up in Bagdad, Fla., a small town near Pensacola. His dad, who also goes by Bubba, gave him a 9-iron at age 6, with instructions to swing hard and hit the ball as far as possible. Bubba the elder figured his son could learn, in time, to hit it straight.
But the younger Watson enjoyed trying to hook and slice Wiffle balls around trees on the family’s 1 1/2-acre property. He drew a 5-foot wide circle in the dirt driveway, pretended that was the hole and bent those Wiffle balls every which way he could.
Watson eventually learned to make some putts, too, his confidence growing in recent years on the Nationwide Tour. He made 67 of 70 putts from 10 feet or closer at the Sony, a chief reason for his high finish.
So he arrived at the Buick as a budding folk hero, his long drives enhanced by his spot on the leaderboard in Honolulu. Before long, Watson added a stream of memorable quips to his portfolio.
– On the origin of his name: “As soon as I was born, 10 seconds later my dad said, ‘He’s fat and ugly. Let’s call him Bubba.’ ”
– On Daly: “He’s still a fan favorite because he’s different. He’s not just a machine — he’s more of a redneck, like me.”
– On his hobbies: “I’m real lazy. I hate running, I just like to sleep. I think Tiger and his caddie went out running yesterday. I was like, ‘You won’t see me doing that, and my caddie won’t be running, either.’ ”
– On his disdain for formal instruction: “If it ever comes down to where I need a lesson, I’m quitting. I’m never going to have a lesson. … People say, ‘Quiet your hips,’ and I don’t have a clue what they mean. I just hit it.”
Watson runs the risk of coming off as a clown, too eager to bathe in attention and too stubborn to take advice. His wife, Angie, a 6-4 former basketball player at Georgia, insisted Bubba is just being Bubba.
“He’s got a sense of humor. He enjoys making people laugh,” she said. “At the same time, he just wants to play golf. … He doesn’t want to be mistaken for one of those guys who just goes out and pounds it. He expects to score low and win tournaments.”
That didn’t happen at the Buick, where Watson stepped to the No. 1 tee on Thursday and hit a weak hook to the right, clanging off a tree. He raised his hand as if to acknowledge applause — the crowd was silent — and then cracked, “I’ll be here two days and then I’m going home.” Watson actually made the cut, then shot a 3-under 69 on Saturday.
The opening errant shot did not deter Watson because he hauled out his pink-shafted driver again on No. 2 and tried to reach the 326-yard par-4. His drive was nearly pin-high, though it drifted right and settled in thick greenside rough.
It was reminiscent of a moment in Japan in November, when Watson used his hybrid club, the equivalent of a 1-iron, to drive a 323-yard, dogleg left par-4. Woods was two groups behind at the time, and he heard Watson pulled out an iron (not exactly true) and drove the green.
As he told the story, Woods smiled and said, “I don’t have that shot.”
Source: sfgate.com