Slaying the Tiger Read online

  With two holes left, Tiger and Poulter had faded, and Justin Rose finished with a bogey. Donaldson was the last opponent standing, and Dubuisson needed just a single birdie for his first win—or, alternatively, just one bogey for a devastating loss. He hit his approach on 17 to about thirty-five feet, which seemed to take him out of birdie range—even the best putters in the game don’t sink more than 10 percent of their putts from outside twenty-five feet.

  As the putt ran toward the hole, he could tell the speed was perfect. He felt like he’d pulled it a shade left, but as it ran closer and closer, it broke slowly back to the right. Dubuisson watched the putt track, and at the final moment, it curled one last inch, caught the outside lip of the cup, and dropped. He pumped his fist downward, frantically like he was punching an invisible tabletop.

  “Seventeen was the big one,” he told me later, “as you can probably tell by my reaction! I laugh at that when I watch it again but it was a really massive moment.”

  In truth, the reaction was far more muted than most players would allow themselves with even less at stake. For the shy Frenchman, though, it passed for jubilation.

  He took this energy to the 18th hole, a shot ahead of Donaldson and needing only a par for his win.

  He managed to keep his first two shots in play on his final hole, leaving himself a short pitch to the flag. Par was almost a guarantee at that point, but standing over his third shot, he felt more nervous than he ever had in his career. It was easy, yes, but easy just meant there was so much to lose.

  He backed off the ball, took two short practice swings, settled his body, and took aim. The ball rose lightly over the edge of a greenside bunker, landed on the green, and trickled toward the pin. By the time it stopped, he had left himself a two-putt that even the most anxious professional golfer couldn’t screw up.

  He wouldn’t need the second stroke—he holed the birdie to win by two. Dubuisson removed his black Titleist visor, shook hands with Poulter, wiped his brow, and then fled in terror as three friends raced onto the green to douse him with champagne.

  * * *

  Over the next year, Dubuisson would leave his indelible mark on the game, intriguing and baffling and impressing us along the way. For now, he simply conducted his television interviews with that enigmatic style—a raised eyebrow, a Gallic shrug—the look of a man who would be happy to conceal his mystery forever.

  What none of us knew, as 2013 wound to a close, was that he was in the vanguard of a movement that would come to transform the sport. Soon there would be others like Victor, young and fearless, waging war on their idols. Many of them were under thirty, and those that weren’t, like Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia, belonged in spirit to the electric, eccentric successive generation. To a man, they embodied the passion that Tiger Woods had introduced to golf almost twenty years before.

  Which was no accident—Tiger was their example, and the man they looked up to as children. He was bigger, badder, and meaner than his opponents, and he inspired a class of players who molded themselves in his image.

  When I spoke with Jim Furyk at the Masters, he told me that he actually tried to hide the fact that he played golf in his high school days.

  “It was a nerdy, goofy sport to play, and a lot of the kids that weren’t athletic played golf,” he said. “I was embarrassed by it.”

  What Tiger did, on an international scale, was to make golf exciting for a new generation. He brought power and style to the sport, and he dazzled the kids who watched him in his prime. Those kids grew up, and they followed his lead. The moment Tiger won his first green jacket, he had anointed his successors—the same children who would one day compete on the same battleground, but with the crucial advantage of youth.

  —

  In early 2014, Tiger’s aging body got the better of him, and peers like Phil Mickelson were too battered to pick up the slack. In the vacuum, the balance of power shifted to the young. It spawned a year of evolution, and the season’s defining moments of brilliance and infamy belonged to players like Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Martin Kaymer, Patrick Reed and Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson and Jason Day.

  Golf’s most exciting season since Tiger’s prime was imminent, and it was presaged on that November Sunday with a victory by an elusive Frenchman on the Mediterranean coast.

  2

  PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA

  The Two Bubbas; Riviera and the Rise of the Second Wave

  “I just have to rejoice. That’s what this whole year is about, trying to rejoice…I can think of a quote from Bible. I think it’s Philippians 4:11 that says, ‘I’m not in need. I’m content with my circumstances.’ ”

  —BUBBA WATSON, January 30, 2014, after an opening round 64 at the Phoenix Open

  Heading into the final round of the 2014 Phoenix Open, on Super Bowl Sunday, Bubba Watson held a tenuous lead on Kevin Stadler. He had not won a tournament in almost two years, and he badly wanted to break his slump. Bubba is a complicated man, though, and the only safe bet was that February 2 would be a complicated day. It ended for him with a missed par putt on the 18th hole, and Stadler left Phoenix with his first professional victory. Bubba’s drought continued, and the Tour moved on to Pebble Beach, where Jimmy Walker won his third event of the season along the cliffs of the Monterey Peninsula. Walker’s surprising domination—before the 2014 season, the thirty-five-year-old had never won on Tour—propelled him to the top of the FedEx Cup standings as the players headed south, to the Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles.

  * * *

  “When you get the first win, media says ‘where’s your second win?’ When you get your first major, where’s your second? When you get your first major, where’s your next win? So it’s a never-ending story, and the one thing nobody ever talks about, they never put on your tombstone how many wins and losses you have on Tour. If you look at me, I’m a loser my whole life. I’ve only had like five wins and lost like four hundred times.”

  —BUBBA

  The smell of eucalyptus—fresh mint and honey, sharpest when the wind blows off the Pacific—hung in the air at Riviera Country Club, emanating from the tops of the massive trees that tower over palms, magnolias, and the ashy, gnarled sycamores. It’s a stimulating scent, something to inhale as you hike up and down the hills on the lovely course in the Santa Monica Canyon, just a stone’s throw from the ocean.

  Here, you’re treated to certain architectural novelties, like the bunker built smack in the middle of the sixth green, or the 10th hole, with its narrow, sand-protected green, making it the most confounding drivable par 4 on Tour. Everywhere, players fight the wind, the hills, and the steep, stone-faced barranca winding through the fairways. The journey ends on the 18th in a blind, uphill tee shot and a tricky approach into the green, where embankments form a natural amphitheater, sloping up to the massive Spanish Revival clubhouse with its seashell-white stucco walls and clay tile roof.

  Bubba Watson puzzled over the course during the first two days of the Northern Trust Open, finishing Friday at -1 and positioning himself in the middle of the pack. Then he came out firing like a howitzer on Saturday, posting a 64 to fight his way into the penultimate group for the final round. Ahead of him, William McGirt (-12), Charlie Beljan (-10), and George McNeill (-10) had very little experience winning PGA Tour events, and it showed—the best any of them would shoot on Sunday was a 70. On a clear day with wind gusts rarely topping out above 10 mph, that was never going to be good enough.

  The stumbling leaders opened the door to a charge from below, and Bubba took the reins, sinking two sixteen-foot putts and a thirty-three-footer on the way to posting a front nine 30. He was nine holes from finally securing that slippery title, but as badly as he wanted to win, there were others—many others—who would be rooting for a collapse.

  —

  Anti-Bubba sentiment has been around as long as Bubba himself, but until 2014, it had largely simmered below the surface. There are very few outlaws in golf, and
the players enjoy certain protections from the media, especially on the television side. Fans take their cue from the broadcasts, and have followed suit in fabricating saints from the raw material of mere athletes. It takes a lot to lose this security blanket—to stand exposed before a press that typically goes out of its way to accommodate.

  To truly understand Bubba’s trajectory over the years, we have to jump ahead in time, past Riviera, to late 2014 and the PGA Championship. That’s where it happened—the moment when the tide finally turned, and a friendly press turned hostile.

  During Tuesday’s practice round, the PGA of America decided to resurrect the long-drive contest that had been a tournament staple back in the fifties and sixties. The organizers set up a digital scoreboard on the par-5 10th tee, and from the start, the contest was a huge success with players and fans. Padraig Harrington took a running start into his swing, Happy Gilmore style. Phil Mickelson, Keegan Bradley, and Rickie Fowler, playing together, hammed it up with the crowd. Rory McIlroy hadn’t even planned to play number 10, but came over after his front nine to hit a drive for the fans…and when it went out of bounds, he hit another for the hell of it. All in all, it was a harmless exhibition, and a bit of fun for anyone with a practice round ticket and the fortitude to endure Kentucky’s stultifying late-summer humidity.

  You might have thought Bubba would enjoy the spectacle more than most. He can hit the ball a mile—he’s led the Tour in driving distance several times—and he famously encouraged fans at the 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah to cheer during his swing, so that he was surrounded by a delirious wall of noise as he teed off. Bubba relished the attention, and though he later claimed the stunt was meant only to “grow the game,” the ego was hard to deny.

  The long-drive contest was another attempt to grow the game, but when Bubba arrived on the 10th tee, he didn’t feel so charitable.

  “This is fucking ridiculous,” he muttered, cursing at the PGA staff assembled around the hole. He said that he’d be hitting a driver every other day, but not today.

  After playing partner Chesson Hadley teed off, he barely had time to pick up his tee and step aside as Bubba raced up and hit a lazy 3-iron. Before the announcer even finished saying the words “Bubba Watson,” the ball was in the air and he was striding angrily down the fairway.

  Later, I asked two of the kids manning the tent on the 10th tee to name their favorite player. They debated between Mickelson, Bradley, and Fowler. There was no hesitation when I asked for their least favorite.

  “Bubba,” they said in unison.

  “He’s an asshole,” added the first.

  “Not wanting to do it is one thing,” said his friend. “But be a man about it.”

  Afterward, he offered no explanation except that he was trying to “learn” the course—as though asking him to hit one driver on a hole where he would almost always hit driver anyway was an unforgivable imposition on his process. He went on to insist that he didn’t care what people thought of him, and he was only concerned about how he looked in the eyes of God.*1

  The story becomes even stranger when you consider that the prize for winning the event was twenty-five thousand dollars to the charity of the winner’s choice. Bubba uses charity and religion as his sword and shield; why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to win free money for the cause of his choice?

  As the week went on, Bubba’s outlook did not improve. On Friday, as a light rain fell throughout the morning and his game suffered, he resorted to temper tantrums on the course. He began his round on the back nine, and by the 16th hole, he was already whining as Rory McIlroy waxed him.

  “I can’t play golf, man,” he said to his caddie Ted Scott, one of the most respected bagmen in the game. “I got nothing.”

  The language took a turn for the worse on the 18th, when he moaned about his poor play. “It doesn’t matter what I do, man. It doesn’t matter. It’s fucking horseshit.”

  After the turn, he threw a club, then blamed it all on the weather. “Water on the clubface, bro,” he barked to Scott. “Water on the clubface. I’ve got no chance.”

  He had managed to survive the fallout from the long-drive contest, but this was the final straw—the response, both from media and fans, was instantaneous. Bubba refused to come out for his post-round interview, but Golf Channel’s Jason Sobel waited him out for an hour and a half. Sobel’s reward was a handful of halfhearted quotes, and he proceeded to lambaste him in that day’s column. Dave Kindred followed suit at Golf Digest, ratcheting up the sarcasm:

  “He had to play with raindrops on his driver’s face. We all know that is Satan’s work, for surely the prince of darkness diverted the raindrops from all other players and caused them to settle only on Bubba’s sticks. Raindrops everywhere, all morning, beginning at 6 o’clock and falling even through Bubba’s tee time at 8:35. For hours, raindrops kept falling on Bubba’s haircut, causing, methinks, reverberations in the vast empty spaces beneath.”

  The blogs were even less kind, and Twitter was blowing up with fans spouting anti-Watson rhetoric, spearheaded by two hashtags that proved devastatingly effective. The first, #YearOfRejoicing, referenced the philosophy he had been repeating all season, a reminder to himself to be grateful for the millionaire’s life he was leading. As an instrument of blunt irony, these words worked beautifully when paired with a quote such as “water on the clubface, bro!” The second hashtag, #PrayForTedScott, referred to his caddie, and needed no further explanation.

  Bubba made a token apology on Twitter later that day, and had his PR-crafted contrition act ready for the Barclays tournament two weeks later. The entire fiasco, though, left a larger question unresolved:

  Who the hell is this guy?

  —

  There are two Bubbas, and they exist side by side, engaged in an endless power struggle.

  The first Bubba is the good ol’ boy with a wild streak—a free-swinging maverick with a fearless approach to the game. This is the image he presents to the public, and taken at face value, it’s a welcome antidote to golf’s stuffy atmosphere. He looks like a young Randy Quaid, speaks with the choppy, self-assured cadence of George W. Bush, and swings like he’s trying to come out of his shoes. He’ll often refer to himself in the third person—“Well, if you ever heard about Bubba Watson’s career, you know that I’m in trouble a lot”—and he has one of the sport’s great shit-eating grins. Even his name—Bubba, strong and southern, folksy and historical, and loads of fun for a gallery to shout—lends him the aura of a people’s champion.

  He relentlessly promotes his own altruism, and at times, it’s almost possible to believe it. When Ping ran a campaign to raise money for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Bubba made up the $110,000 shortfall at the end. He once gave thirty-five thousand dollars to his high school and choked up as he spoke to the students about his own academic troubles. He donates to adopting families, and sick kids, and earthquake victims, often bringing his sponsors on board to increase the payout. And while you might raise an eyebrow at just how public the entire process can be—he’s not the only golfer to be charitable, but he gets far more PR mileage out of it than anyone else—the fact remains that he’s giving.

  Then there’s the beginning of his relationship with Angie Ball, his future wife. They spent their first date at a golf course—she didn’t know Bubba played, and you can imagine how much he enjoyed her shock when he launched his first drive. Afterward, sitting in the car, she told him that she couldn’t bear children. Bubba told her it was okay, and that he wanted to adopt.

  These are the rare times when it’s possible to see his Christian beliefs in action, and it’s why his entourage will defend him so forcefully, even in the difficult moments.

  “I think when Bubba Watson gets too serious about golf or life, that’s when you see a different side of him,” said Webb Simpson, a fellow Christian on Tour and one of Bubba’s biggest defenders. “Bubba’s love language is giving you a hard time, so if he’s giving you a hard time, it means he likes y
ou.”

  America saw the “good” version of Bubba in 2012, when he found himself stuck in the pine straw on the second hole of a Sunday playoff at the Masters. Blocked out by trees, he had no angle to the green, and so he invented his own—a physics-defying snap hook with a fifty-two-degree gap wedge that sailed toward the far side of the fairway before making a boomerang sweep to the right and, incredibly, settling on the green ten feet from the pin.

  Dressed all in white, his long hair trailing out the back of his visor, he emerged from the trees looking like golf’s true messiah. The crowd roared one word in unison—“Bubba!”—and reached out to touch him as he glided past. When Louis Oosthuizen failed to get up-and-down from the front of the green, Bubba two-putted to win the green jacket. It’s no exaggeration to call his approach one of the most memorable shots in golf history, and whatever else happens in Watson’s career, he leaves behind a memory that will last as long as people play the sport.

  What’s more, it was the perfect consummation of “Bubba Golf,” a sui generis style that is both reckless and awe-inspiring. In the moments before that shot, CBS’s Nick Faldo summed up his chaotic magic when he said that Bubba was “rewriting the instructional book every time he hits a shot.”

  In preaching the virtues of that approach, Bubba is his own best promoter.

  “My whole game is built on me playing golf, me manufacturing something,” he said. “If you watch, sometimes you’ll see me slice my driver fifty yards to just get into play. Sometimes you’ll see me bomb away and put it in the rough to have an easier shot at the green. All I’m trying to do is score. I don’t care how I do it. There’s no pictures on scorecards.”