The brilliant and bizarre that defines Bubba

Inever imagined holding a hillbilly who uses a hovercraft as a golf cart in the same high regard as I do legends like Shane Warne and Richie McCaw.

Very odd threesome, I must admit. Warnie, Richie and Gerry Lester Watson Jnr, or better known as Bubba.

What could this odd combination possibly have in common? Well, absolutely nothing besides a natural born talent of holding South Africans by the short and curlies.

Warnie toyed with South African batsmen for over a decade with an extreme fondness for one in particular, and despite their recent blip at Ellis Park, the wily McCaw still owns the Springbok team.

Recently Watson has acquired a similar skill on the golf course.

As if it wasn’t enough that the left-handed magician famously destroyed the ultimate golfing fantasy of one Saffer draping the fabled green jacket over the shoulders of a fellow countryman by ousting Louis Oosthuizen in a play-off at Augusta in 2012, he struck two and a half years later against Tim Clark in Shanghai at the weekend. His play-off win in the WGC-HSBC Champions was nowhere near the magnitude of his Masters feat, but the similarities of these two wins were remarkable nonetheless.

Both involved an outrageous Watson shot, a play-off and a beaten South African.

At Augusta it was the draw/ pull/ hook he navigated out of the dense Amazon after being dead and buried from the 10th tee on the second play-off hole that def lated/demoralised/defeated Oosthuizen.

In Shanghai it was his eagle from the nasty greenside trap on the last hole of regulation play that got him into a play-off with Clark. He also sank a crazy birdie putt to win the play-off, but it was his shot from the sand that will have Clark breaking out in a cold sweat at midnight.

In cases like these even the most patriotic of supporters have no choice but to acknowledge when their man has been outplayed by a true star, like a Warne, McCaw or Watson.

And it’s hard not to be a Bubba fan of some sort. From the unbelievable length he generates with those pink shafts to the honest way he speaks in his familiar Southern accent, the man who hails from Bagdad in Florida is truly a piece of work.

Last year when the Vijay Singh bomb exploded about his use of deer-antler spray on his back and knees, a reporter asked Bubba’s opinion on the matter.

“I’ve never taken deer-antler spray. I don’t even know how you take deer-antler spray.”

In 2011 he upset the French with his antics during the French Open in Versailles. He described the Eiffel Tower as “that big tower”, the Louvre as the “building starting with an L” and the Arc de Triomphe as “this arch I drove around in a circle”.

He later apologised for his remarks and said: “I didn’t know how to pronounce the names in the right way. That’s my bad luck. They say it was disrespectful and I’m sorry for that. But I’m a golfer, not a history major”.

Would the golfing world be a whole lot poorer without good ol’ Bubba?

Elementary, my dear Watson.