AUGUSTA – Bubba Watson was asked a lot Friday about the greatest shot he ever executed at Augusta National.
No, it was not that miraculous hook shot out of the woods on No. 10 that won him the 2012 Masters in a playoff.
According to the Watson, it was the 171-yard pitching wedge he hit out of the woods to a 1½-feet for birdie at No. 18 in Friday’s second round of the Masters. While this shot only saved him from the cut line, Watson insisted it was harder to pull off that the 160-yard gap wedge with 40 feet of bend that earned him his first green jacket.
“I’ve got to be honest, that was the best shot I’ve ever hit at Augusta National, that one right there,” Watson said, still beaming about it after leaving the scoring cabin.We’ll let him explain.
“It was 183 yards with adjustment. My ball was sitting two inches in the air. A piece of a branch was on the ground and my ball was on top of it. There were two leaves behind it I couldn’t move and two leaves touching it. I had a gap way up in the trees and I just said, ‘I’m going to hit a wedge as hard as I can.’”
But just as Watson was ready to slash, a big maple leaf blew in from behind him and completely covered his ball. He could no longer see it.
Watson summoned over a rules official who was already in the area to oversee the situation. Watson was told he could move it as long as it didn’t move the ball. It did not.
Finally, Watson could take his swipe. His ball did exactly as commanded. It was a shame Watson couldn’t see what his wedge wrought.
“It went straight up, and then a gust from the gods blew,” he said. “It was as high as I could hit it, and somehow it went a foot from the hole. They all said, ‘good shot,’ the guys I was playing with. I said, ‘where did it go?’”
Arriving to wild applause around the green, the argument then was whether his ball stopped a foot or two feet from the pin. It went into the official record at two feet, but Watson argued that it couldn’t have been because “I’m nervous at two feet. Those aren’t gimmes for me. I had to mark that thing.”
The birdie at No. 18 left Watson at 2-over par, well inside the cutline.
That this shot would come exactly 10 years to the day after “The Shot” was the stuff of Hollywood script. That one, of course, won Watson his first of two Masters championships. The left-hander’s 160-yard gap wedge with 40 yards of bend to 15 feet from an obscure spot among the pines right of the No. 10 fairway still competes in arguments here as the greatest shot ever at Augusta National. It resulted in a par and defeated Louis Oosthuizen, positioned in the fairway off the tee, on the first hole of a playoff.
There remains no officially marker at the spot of those heroics. Fans who claim to know or remember where it was annually venture 20 or so yards into the woods and fashion a crude “X” in the general area. Even Watson’s wife Angie was spotted there Friday pointing out the flight line she remembers to a group of friends.
Watson himself wasn’t anywhere near that spot. In fact, he cracked a perfect drive down the middle of the No. 10 fairway Friday, almost all the way down to the bottom of the hill. From there, he promptly deposited his approach shot into a bunker in the back-right of the green. He walked away with bogey.
Perhaps he should have hit his tee shot deep into trouble again. Alas, some people just like doing things the hard way.
Watson will allow that “the hook shot” was certainly “the greatest” he has pulled off here for its meaningfulness. Yes, there is the play-Masters-for-life factor. But even more poignant is Bubba and Angie brought home their adopted son Caleb just two weeks before.
“He is 10 years old now, so it’s a 10-year-old shot,” Watson said, shaking his head at the thought. “It’s crazy to think about that. So, yeah, it means a lot to my family and me. It’s amazing how fast it goes. It feels like it was yesterday, but it was 10 years ago. It’s a dream come true to be able to pull that shot off in those moments.”
But Watson has made a sweet living hitting sweeping hook shots. Friday’s was different. Deep in the trees at 3-over at the time, Watson knew he was staring at double-bogey with the cut line looming at plus-4 or 5.
The pro-player’s handbook would say punch out to the fairway and take your chances from there. Watson’s book told him to look for an escape route somewhere high in the trees and go for it.
“Nobody in the world would have tried that shot that I tried; there’s nobody on the planet that would have tried it,” Watson said.
Well, one guy.
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