Watson returns to tour earlier than expected
When Bubba Watson capped his dismal 2016-17 season with a tie for 69th in the Dell Technologies Championship during the FedExCup Playoffs in September, he couldn’t wait to get home.
Ahead of him was four months of being a dad.
It’s his most important job, he often says, and he has loved every minute of being with his wife, Angie, and two children, Caleb and Dakota. He’s volunteering at his son’s school and helping out as a coach for some of the school’s teams. His daughter is doing great in preschool. And he attended to Angie when she recently had knee surgery.
Watson intended to go back to work on the PGA Tour in January, but when he and his wife spent time in the hospital after her surgery — “And 32 staples later she’s doing well,” Watson said — Angie changed up the schedule.
“My wife saw I wanted to get back,” Watson said earlier this week as he prepared to make his 2017-18 debut in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open at TPC Summerlin near Las Vegas. He shot 1-over-par 72 in Thursday’s first round, seven shots behind leader Whee Kim of South Korea.
“I was eager to get back. I’ve been working hard on my game to try to get back and stay in shape,” Watson added.
“As I kept practicing, and I felt my game was where I wanted it to be, my wife saw that. She had her surgery, and we stayed in the hospital for a couple days, and then we kept talking those two days away from the kids in the hospital, and she said, ‘You want to go play, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I really do.’ ”
Watson decided to play this week to help support the city’s efforts to recover from the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip that killed 58 people and wounded nearly 550 more Oct. 1. And he wanted to put last season behind him as quickly as possible.
Watson, a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour and a two-time Masters champion, hasn’t won since capturing the 2016 Northern Trust Open. At the start of 2017 he was ranked 10th in the official world golf rankings. But in his last 21 starts across the world, he has had just three top-10s, had six finishes of 26th or worse, missed seven cuts and withdrew from another tourna-
“I was eager to get back. I’ve been working hard on my game to try to get back and stay in shape.” Bubba Watson on returning to the PGA Tour earlier than excepted
ment. He’s fallen to No. 63 in the world.
“It was a frustrating year when it came to the golf,” Watson said. “It was a great year off the course, but a frustrating year. Hopefully I’ll improve that.”
Part of his frustration on the golf course stemmed from thinking about his wife’s upcoming surgery (she will have another surgery on her other knee in the future, Watson said) and working out all the particulars in attending to her after the surgery and helping to take care of the kids.
Another reason for his poor play seemed to deal with the pink, yellow and green golf balls he was using. Watson signed a golf ball deal in January
2017 with Volvik but then couldn’t golf his ball as he had in the past. Most every one of his statistical categories took a hit. For instance, the Banger from Baghdad, Fla., finished 20th in driving distance average at 305.8 yards for the 2016-17 season, down from
310.6 the previous season.
This week, however, Watson will tee up a Titleist Pro V1x.
“My contract is done with Volvik. I do not have a ball deal as we sit here today,” Watson said. “So I can play with whatever ball I want to. I’m just going to go back to what I grew up with, so I’m playing Titleist.”