Bubba Watson interview: This year’s Masters dinner will be less awkward

There will be a number of Spanish dishes at Jon Rahm’s Champions Dinner on Tuesday that Bubba Watson is not even sure he wants translated for him, never mind cooked. Yet he is plainly relieved that at least one unpalatable ingredient will be absent from that menu in the Augusta clubhouse – “tension”.

“It will be different to last year,” Watson says, nodding his head when asked if the atmosphere will not be as awkward. “The two sides, LIV and the PGA Tour, weren’t talking back then, but there are negotiations going on now. The PGA Tour was against us, but now they’re not. As it should, the night will be all about the champion and the great names in that room. And The Masters will be all about the golf.”

It would be a mistake to believe that the air around that table in golf’s winner sanctum will be completely devoid of tribalism. As, indeed, the sense of ‘them and us’ will exist in the four days of competition. A few days ago, LIV Golf posted on social media a picture of their 13 representatives in the season’s first major all lined up together and Sergio Garcia soon added a caption: “We are coming for the green jacket”.

Of course, Garcia already has one and Rahm, the recent £400 million capture by the Saudi-funded circuit, possesses the newest of the lot. Watson, meanwhile, has two and will be in celebratory mood as he marks the 10th anniversary of personal legitimisation.

“You know, after 2012 I did feel something of an imposter and when I won two years later I could say to myself ‘right, you are not a one-hit wonder, you’ve done it again’. I didn’t hear anybody call me an impostor or fraud anything. It’s just the feeling I had in myself. But I guess it’s hard to accuse someone, even yourself, of being a two-hit wonder.”

One hit will remain above all others when it comes to the unique character christened Gerry Lester at birth, but soon repurposed as Bubba because of what his father called “a real chubby face”. During that 2012 play-off with Louis Oosthuizen, Watson conjured a shot off the pine straw in the trees that even Seve Ballesteros’s imagination would have considered warped.

He had 163 yards on a straight line to the pin – except there was no straight line. Watson hit a 52 degree lob wedge with a 40-yard banana hook that performed airborne miracles to find the putting surface, before spinning towards the pin. It was the strike of an unreconstructed genius from Baghdad, Florida.

“People ask me, when you go back do you go over and have a look at the spot, but I don’t – they’ve put more trees in there, ‘Bubba-proofed’ it. Yeah, It’s the best shot I’ve ever played under pressure. But in terms of just a golf shot, I probably even played a few better that round. People don’t get that.”

Watson is a one-off, and not only because a coach of the renown of Pete Cowen can still picture that controlled, wild hook from a player who famously had never had a lesson and opine ‘you are not supposed to be able to do that with the modern ball that minimises spin’.

‘My troubles were in my mind, not my body’

Watson’s vision with club-in-hand knew no bounds, but away from the course he was tethered by anxiety. It is well-chronicled how his brain deceived him into believing that he was riven by cancer. He lost almost three stone and his faith in the medical profession who on multiple occasions assured him that the problem was not physical.

“I look back at my troubles and can now understand that it was my mind and not my body. But anybody who has been through anything like that knows that the two are indistinguishable.

“It was at its worst in 2015, and I supposed that could have been the peak of my career, with two majors in the previous three years – but I haven’t really thought about it like that.

“I just wanted to get well for my family, for my kids. In 2017 it all turned around and I feel blessed that because of golf and largely because of the Masters that we have been able to help open hospitals in Pensacola and Africa. A decade on, I’m in a much better place now. Probably the happiest I’ve been.”

Time has performed its old healing trick, but Watson is adamant that so, too, has LIV Golf. Watson was once voted the golfer his Tour peers would be least likely to defend in a fight, but he always yearned to be wanted and loved. As captain of the Range Goats, he clearly now feels that.

‘I’ve got one more big run’

Watson is perhaps the one player on the breakaway circuit who sounds entirely genuine when saying, “to me, it’s the team first – I’d rather we win than I win”. If only he could manifest this affection in good play and reprise that form of yore. But despite rumours of retirement and becoming a non-playing captain, Watson insists he is not done.

“I’m 45, have got over that knee surgery from a few years ago and still think I’ve got at least one more big run in me. The hunger’s still there. But, you might have noticed, there’s some great players out there.”

Watson lists a few of his LIV compadres among his picks for this 88th addition of The Masters. Rahm, obviously, and reigning USPGA champion Brooks Koepka, while he expresses sadness together with a measure of disgust that 2023 LIV champion Talor Gooch is not qualified amid the world ranking inequities of the split.

But the actual favourite might also be his favourite to prevail and a decade later to complete what would be an eerie four-timer for Ted Scott.

Watson let go his long-time caddie in 2021. He went all Dolly Parton and told Scott that if he stayed, Bubba would only be in his way and to go and find a new champion. Scott, 52, considered hanging up the bib and moving into coaching. Until Scottie Scheffler phoned.

At the time, Scheffler had yet to win, but in the 30 months with Scott has prevailed 11 times, highlighted by the 2022 Masters. The undisputed world No 1 goes into Augusta with 2-1-1 in his last three events and at prohibitive odds – as low as 3-1 – to replicate Watson’s achievement in winning two green jackets in three years.

“Teddy was the difference to me winning twice and I knew he could be for another player. I don’t want to say he has been for Scottie, because he’s a better player than me, but Teddy will have had a huge effect, I tell you. I was with Teddy for 15 years and we did well. But he’s already earned more money with his new guy. Scottie has it all.”

‘I’ll try some of Rahm’s dishes... maybe’

What he has is a swing that bears some resemblance to Watson’s in that his feet leave the ground during the swing. The Scheffler Shuffle will never be as unruly as the Watson waltz across that tee-box, but there is the continuation of a trend.

“Instructors always say don’t move your feet, but that’s restrictive,” Watson says. “Scottie is doing his own thing and is doing it amazingly. I’ve never injured my back and don’t think my knee problem was to do with it, so giving your body that ability to clear is a good thing in my opinion. Not everyone has to swing the same way. It’s better if they don’t.”

Watson is not a disciple to convention. He admits to having to reign in himself at Augusta National – “I have to act like someone I’m not in certain circumstances, but that’s ok because to me it’s about respect” – but certain traits are hard to drop.

He is unashamedly “a local kid from the panhandle” and is not bowled over by culture. Watson’s interest in foreign travel was once summed up by his announcement in Paris that he had visited “some big tower and a building with art beginning with L”. His tastes are similarly insular. Sir Nick Faldo described one of Watson’s Champions Dinners as “a Happy Meal” and Rahm has seized on this, pleading with him to partake of items on a menu that includes Idiázabal con trufa negra (Idiázabal cheese, black truffle), Chistorra con patata (spicy Basque chorizo, potato) and lentejas estofadas (Mama Rahm’s Classic Lentil Stew).

“Jon’s been ribbing me and asking if I’ll eat it all, because he knows that I usually take the easy route and eat early before I get to the dinner,” Watson says with a snigger. “Yeah, I told him I’d try it. Not all of it. Just some. Maybe.”