SAN DIEGO — Bubba Watson can still hammer a tee shot, with a homemade swing and a pink shaft and several contortions along the way.
He has finished in the top 5 just once in this major championship, that coming in 2007 at Oakmont.
Bubba Watson is not supposed to win the Masters and somehow I did it twice.
This week he said he spoke with Matthew Wolff, the 22-year-old who took two months away from golf to focus on his own mental health.
“It’s probably more helpful to me than him just because I can hear it again in my own head, me saying it out loud, and I played pretty calm out there the last couple days,” Watson said.
“I was just kind of in the flow playing with two great guys , shooting the breeze, making fun of them and stuff.
His 11 birdies this week ties the most he has put up at this point in a major; he made 11 birdies at the halfway point in the 2010 PGA Championship, where he ended up losing in a playoff to Martin Kaymer at Whistling Straits.
His best stroke-play finish was a tie for 13th at the Valspar Championship.
I got really tired at the PGA Championship, just exhausting, trying to make the cut on Friday with that wind.