The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
A different emotion for Watson this time around
CROMWELL — Bubba Watson was looking over his stats on the PGA Tour app the other day. It was after the second or third round of the Travelers Championship, his wife Angie said she couldn’t remember for sure.
This is what she does remember.
“If you scroll down a little bit on the app, there are highlights,” Angie Watson said after her man had won a third Travelers title, something only the late Billy Casper has done in the 67-year history of Connecticut’s premier sporting event. “Bubba started looking at them, looked at the highlights from 2010. And he got emotional.”
With Caleb, 6, and Dakota, 3, holding their replica Travelers trophies, with Caleb pulling at his mom for a piece of candy and a slice of pizza, Angie broke into a smile: “Wow, we looked different in those videos. We aged being parents, but it was fun to watch.”
Families do not live in straight lines. They peak with great times and valley with hard times. They laugh and they cry and sometimes Bubba, the most emotional man in golf, throws a snit.
“But I am the fastest to apologize,” Watson said after he had shot a 7-underpar 63 to wipe out Paul Casey’s commanding lead and pocket $1.26 million.
To know Bubba Watson is to know the Travelers Championship and to know the Travelers Championship is to know Bubba. So there he was in 2010, sinking a 3-foot putt on the second playoff hole for his first PGA Tour victory, overcoming a six-shot deficit, falling into Angie’s arms in tears. Angie had to
take the microphone at the awards ceremony on the 18th green that Sunday. “I couldn’t breathe,” Bubba would say later.
It was Angie who told us how Bubba’s dad Gerry, a lieutenant in the Green Berets during the Vietnam War, was fighting lung cancer. He would die a few months later. Gerry was the man who taught Bubba about golf, and life, and even on this Sunday, as the rain forced the awards ceremony inside, Bubba would say, “This is a special place in my heart. It’s my first win and my dad getting to see it before he passed away.”
Casey was almost lyrical earlier in the tournament talking about the great democracy of TPC River Highlands. Casey would use Watson, one of the longest hitting pro golfers, and Corey Pavin, one of the shortest, ending up in the same 2010 Travelers playoff as proof.
The course also is democratic enough to rip one’s heat out more than once. Casey, who lost to Watson in the 2015 Travelers playoffs, had shot a 62 on Saturday. He hit all 18 greens in regulation. His four-stroke lead over Russell Henley would tie as the largest 54-hole lead in tournament history. Afterward, Casey said things like, “I sit here right now with no nerves.” And “I did everything I wanted to do.” And, “I love this golf course.”
After a birdie on the first hole, the golf course did not love him back Sunday. He had saved himself with a 28-foot par putt on 10 and, after dumping his tee shot in the water, saving par again on 13. At 5:09 p.m., after Bubba had hit a spectacular approach shot and dropped a 30-inch putt on 18, he doffed his hat for the crowd and Angie had thrust her right hand into air. Bubba finally had the lead. Yet the tournament was not over.
Casey missed a 7-foot putt for a bogey on 16 at 5:23 p.m. Now it was over. When he dumped his tee shot on 17 into the water, Mighty Casey had struck out. Again.
Bubba had come from six strokes back on the final day to win the Travelers for the second time. Afterward he would talk about tricking himself into believing he could do it. With his kids listening, he said he wouldn’t use the word “lie.” His birdie rampage started on the fifth hole. After essentially driving the green for a birdie on nine, he chipped in from 49 feet on 10. He hit from 14 feet on 12 and when he struck from 11 feet on 15, Bubba pumped his fist.
“That’s when I really started believing,” Watson said.
Every tournament victory needs a crowning achievement. After breaking out the Bubba war club for a 366-yard drive on 18, he found himself 71 yards straight downwind from the pin. Watson would hit a perfect 63-degree wedge to within 30 inches of the hole.
“Amazing shot,” Watson’s caddie Ted Scott said, throwing his arm around Bubba.
At the 2013 Travelers, Bubba had come off badly on national television. Microphones caught him, ah, voicing his displeasure with Scott’s club selection. Bubba hit a 9-iron instead of an 8-iron, on the par-3 and he dumped the shot in the water for a triple bogey.
On Saturday, Watson sent Scott a voice message to apologize for his attitude against this weekend. He said he was miserable Thursday when he shot a 70. Scott texted back, “Let’s have fun out there.”
So they did. As they got to 16, Watson was pumped up. Scott went, “We’re not hitting 9-iron.” Watson said, “This time I would hit it lower.” Scott answered, “We are not hitting 9.”
Bubba nailed the 8-iron. They had a good laugh. Family.
“It was our little joke,” he said. “It kept us in the moment.”
He had lost 25 pounds in a three-month period last year and illness had left his game a mess. He has won three times already this year. He feels great. He is playing great. He owns the Travelers. Nobody is close to the $4.71 million he has made in Cromwell.
“That’s why I sign up first every year,” Watson said.
Yeah, he’s big around here.
“I said Bubba, ‘They even talked about you on [the TV show] Scandal,” said UConn associate basketball coach Chris Dailey, who has played the Celebrity Pro-Am with Watson. “You’re a real celebrity.”
Angie Watson played for the Georgia women’s basketball team from 19972000. Yes, she played against UConn. Yes, her 1999 team got to the Final Four. Yes, the Watson family ties to Connecticut sports are strong in myriad ways.
“My son asked me last night in the bunk bed [in their RV], ‘Dad when are you going to retire?’” Watson said. “He wants to spend more time with me. They tug at you. Being an adoptive dad, at some point we’ve got to explain to them what adoption means.
“I think I’d retire before I keep battling to win more. It’s motivating me to be a stay-at-home dad and watch him grow and teach him values and life lessons and hopefully he can bomb a driver like me.”
Watson spoke about his dad and 2010 again for a moment and then he talked about how only Caleb was there when he won in 2015, now there is Caleb and Dakota and how the television cameras caught him sticking his head out of the bathroom.
“How funny was that?” Watson asked.
“Yeah,” Angie decided. “It feels like family here.”
Sometimes families cry. On this Sunday, the Watson family laughed.