Sean Zak
Bubba Watson recalling the gap he had in the trees during the final hole of the second round of his 2022 Masters.
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They say there are no pictures on the scorecard, but dammit there should be sometimes. Because at the highest level of the game, particularly at Augusta National, images only heighten the absurdity of the talents of the world’s best golfers.
For two-time Masters champ Bubba Watson, known for bending the ball at will, it was actually a straight ball through an impossibly tight corridor that he calls “one of the best shots of my life.”
Thing is, virtually no one remembers it.
I do, thankfully — and for three years I’ve wondered how he pulled it off. Finally, I got the chance to ask him about it.
Thinking back, I was probably fixated on Watson’s finish in 2022 because I had chosen him in a Masters pool and needed him to make the cut. On Friday of that week, he was at risk of an early dismissal. Watson was three over par and one shot clear of the cut line — one good of the cut, as he put it — and hooked his tee ball on 18 so far right that it would have ended up on the 10th hole had it not crashed into pine trees.
The pinestraw areas nearest the fairways at Augusta National often get trampled down or cleared of leaves during tournament week, keeping the conditions pristine, but if you miss far enough you’ll find more pinecones, untamed areas, bigger bushes and bigger leaves — which is exactly what Watson faced as he was grinding for the cutline.
“It was a big leaf,” that made this shot so difficult, Watson told me recently. Probably from some magnolia tree, he figured, the foliage of which had been cast down to ground level in the chilly, windy conditions. A leaf sat atop his ball, and removing it among a mess of pine needles would likely cause it to shift and incur a penalty. To his left was a low-hanging branch from a flourishing tree, a massive obstacle that kept him from chipping out to the fairway.
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“I could chip backwards, down the fairway 50 yards,” Watson said, throwing his hands left and right like a quarterback diagraming an audible. “That would leave me 230 yards, give or take. I didn’t really have a shot to 10 [fairway]. I was like, I’ve got room behind it, and I’ve got this gap.”
He was pointing to the sky now, on a driving range in South Florida, staring up at an imaginary hole in the Georgia tree branches he was recreating from memory. The distance was 180 yards, he thought, maybe 190, playing 10 yards uphill but very downwind. “My goal was to hit [pitching wedge] as high as I can through that gap and hopefully the wind takes it,” he said.
As long as he missed the trees, he thought, he’d find his ball somewhere in the fairway and try his luck from there. Hit the trees and double bogey (and a missed cut) creeps in real quick. Especially when you consider that leaf.
“You’ve got all these ideas,” he continued. “And then I get over it and I can’t see my ball. I’m like this [looking through the trees, back to the leaf on top his ball, back through the trees]. I said, ‘I can’t see it, I’m still gonna go for it, because this is what I do.’”
What a perfect phrase that encapsulates Bubba Golf. I’m still gonna go for it, because this is what I do. Well, here’s the result:
The ball launched into the sky, cleared the trees and rode the wind before crashing into the front-right edge of the green, bouncing a few times before trickling out to … one foot. The TV camera behind 18 green tried zooming in to see Watson’s reaction but you couldn’t see him through the trees. All that was visible was his caddie in a white jumpsuit with an impish grin, grabbing the club from his wizard of a player. In that moment, caddie and player knew the shot was good but just not how good.
The visuals are stupefying, particularly those stills of (1) Watson at the top of his backswing, more likely to swing and miss at a leaf, and (2) the ball finally at rest 12 seconds later and 12 inches from the hole. As I would come to find out in our conversation, that is just one of four shots on Watson’s personal Mount Rushmore of Augusta National escapes. There is the most famous one, down the right side of 10 during the playoff in his 2012 Masters win, but the other two are more of a mystery.
To watch Watson describe his best Masters shots in vivid detail, InsideGOLF members can check out the video here. To join InsideGOLF, click here.
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