Bubba Watson - Up and Down

2021 Gerry L. Watson

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing Group, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

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Unless otherwise noted all photos are provided courtesy of Bubba Watson.

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Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021943310

ISBN 978-0-7852-9201-2 (HC)

ISBN 978-0-7852-9203-6 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-7852-9204-3 (audio)

Epub Edition August 2021 9780785292036

Printed in the United States of America

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To my wife, Angie, the love of my life. Your support has helped me grow into a better man. Nothing in this world means more to me than being your husband.

To Caleb and Dakota, you are the most amazing gifts I could have ever received. I will cherish you always.

BUBBA WATSON

To Jeanette, thanks for navigating lifes ups and downs with me and making projects like this possible!

DON YAEGER

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

This is not a typical golf book. I had the chance to write a typical golf book a few years ago after Id won my second Masters Tournament. The cover was going to be jet black with my name written in bright pink. That book would have told the life story of golfer Bubba Watson at the height of fame and laid out my accomplishments for all to see, with carefully crafted nods of thanks to this person and that person. Ultimately, I decided not to do the project. I knew the picture of success everyone expected that book to portray would not have been the truth. Well, it would have been true, but it would have been only half of the story because I was not personally ready to reveal the whole story back then. Thank God I waited.

If we had done it, youd have missed my ups and downs: my growth as a husband, father, son, friend, Christian, businessman, and, yes, underwear model. (Okay, I had to put that last one in there.) If Id done the book then, youd have missed the opportunity to grow along with me through a deeper, more complicated, and hopefully relatable story, a story that Im undertaking to tell in this book, right now.

If you love the game of golf or follow me as a fan, I hope that my writing a book that isnt a pure golf book wont turn you away. Im writing this as much for you as for anybody else. You dont honestly think I could write about myself and not include a healthy dose of golf in it, do you?

But I had no interest whatsoever in writing out my life story as an unfolding series of nice, neat chapters that chronicled all my wonderful accomplishments. The truth is, as with most people, my life has been anything but nice and neat. More often than not, it has consisted of ups and downs, triumphs and humiliations, moments of joy, mistakes, and misunderstandings that Ive had to struggle with and learn from, thanks to some very dear people in my life. Everybody battles with their own personal set of demons, and if you know anything at all about me, you know Ive battled plenty of them as well. The difference between most people and me, I suppose, is that most folks dont do all the good and bad things in front of millions of people.

In a way this book tells the story of the challenges I wrestled with my whole life, the people I love who stuck by me even when it felt like I didnt deserve their loyalty, and the life Im still very much in the process of building. Its also a record of how, through my marriage to Angie, I drew closer to Jesus Christ and asked him to help me apply the Bibles teachings to everything I do.

Its an attempt to bring together the public perception of me as the small-town Bubba from Bagdad with my struggle to express my true self and feel like I belong. For example, you may like me because I play with a pink driver or because I entertain you on social media (#UrWelcome for those in the know). You may like me because Ive adopted kids and become, along with Angie, something of a spokesperson for the positive ways in which adoption can change young lives. Or you may not care for me very much because youve seen or read about me blowing up on a course and yelling at my caddie or a spectator. For better or worse, I am all of these things and none of them at the same time.

I know its not pretty when somebody loses their composure in heated moments, but imagine how it feels watching your own bad moments get replayed over and over on ESPN, knowing you can never really take it back, no matter your level of regret.

It seems, well, unsportsmanlike.

What I hope youll take away from spending some time with me in this book is that I am a man working to be better tomorrow than I am today. I hope youll connect with me through this and realize, with a laugh or twenty along the way, that were more alike than different. Golf happens to be what I do. Its not who I am. So, who is this character named Bubba Watson? Well, youre going to have to read the book to find that out.

Suffice to say, I grew up in a household and an era when men were supposed to be stoic and self-sufficient, to let their actions speak for themselves. Sometimes this code of behavior has worked well for me. It helped me achieve a near superhuman focus on developing my gifts with a golfclub to the point where I became known as a child prodigy who shot 62 for eighteen holes at the age of twelve; who won a couple of Masters tournaments and soared to number two in the world; and who earned the opportunity to compete for his country in the Ryder and Presidents Cups and even the Olympics. No one grows up believing these things are possible, much less a kid from Bagdad, Florida, population 3,800.

Ive tried to appreciate each and every one of the amazing opportunities that a life playing golf has given me. But even with that appreciation, the truth is that every dream has two sides. When I hit the hook shot out of the woods to help me win the 2012 Masters, I had no idea how it would impact my life. Sure, I had always dreamed of being a Masters champion, but as I said in the post-round interview, that is where the dream stopped. I never thought about what would happen after the last putt dropped, but I quickly realized I was not equipped mentally or emotionally for living my dream in the public eye. Im not particularly proud of this fact, but its the truth. Im a guy who found something he was good at early in life, then pursued it relentlessly with blind faith and no backup plan. When I started having some level of success on the course, I let that go to my head. I am painfully aware that at times I was difficult to be around, and eventually that rightfully earned me a long spell of public distasteand even rejection.