Golf: Don't cry for tearful Blubba he's just different

Bubba Watson is only the eight golfer to win the Masters twice within three years. Photo / AP

From the tears with baby son Caleb to the supplicatory schmaltz in the Butler Cabin, the spectacle of Bubba Watson's second Masters coronation in three years was a little like gorging on treacle.

As we discovered from his lachrymose crumpling in 2012, Bubba, or rather Blubba, loves a good cry. He cried so much when he earned his tour card that he could not conduct an interview. He broke down at his own wedding to the point where he was incapable of whimpering "I do".

"I'm going to cry, because why me?" he asked. "Why Bubba Watson from Bagdad, Florida? Why is he winning? I'll probably cry again sometime, just thinking about it."

Paradoxically, it was the presence of Caleb that just about kept his father from dissolving into a puddle. Sensing a little paternal composure was called for, he cradled the two-year-old en route to the green jacket presentation as he small-talked with him about how "Daddy just gone and played a li'l golf".

The little boy was adopted by Watson and his wife, former Canadian basketball player Angie Ball, just before his first Masters win, and was the explanation for why this most outlandish talent had scarcely featured on the radar at majors since.

"We got him at a month old, so he didn't have a male figure for the first month of his life," Watson said. "So getting used to smell, touch, feel, sound, everything, I had to be there for my son. I was trying to be a good husband, a good dad. Golf was the farthest thing from my mind."

Leaving aside the likelihood that this tiny bundle had scant sense of who or what he was at two weeks of age, the folksy tribute was duly lapped up amid the tenderness of the moment. This is Augusta, where syrup tends to be applied not with a teaspoon but a trowel.

Still, there was no doubting the magnitude of Watson's feat.

Dear Bubba, ever-mercurial and madder than a jar of bees in the American parlance, has joined Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sir Nick Faldo, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson as only the eighth man to win two green jackets within three years.

The sport's Mount Rushmore must now be recarved to accommodate a figure who wields a blunderbuss pink driver and has never had a formal lesson in his life.

To understand how this is even possible, it helps to realise that Bubba has a brain wired differently to the rest of us. One of the lesser-known anecdotes of his 2012 victory came from the prize giving, where he received his first green jacket from defending champion Charl Schwartzel, a qualified pilot. In those precious seconds Watson asked the South African not about their shared ordeal on Amen Corner, or what spot he might be given in the champions' locker room, but about the type of police helicopter flying overhead.

The same zany thought process held true this year as Watson, apparently far from apprehensive before his defining Sunday round at Augusta, chose to run a trivia session on Twitter. Perhaps the same logic, or lack of it, applied to his decision to hit his second shot to the 15th green through a gap in the trees, over the water with the Masters on the line.

It was the audacity of the one golfer in the field who could reduce the par-five 15th to a 335m drive and a gap-wedge. This, then, was the essence of "Bubba golf' - a crazy, instinctive, ask-questions-later approach to the game that Watson appears to have had since birth.

"I'm not playing this game for everybody to tell me that I'm one of the greats," he said. "I play it because I love it." Telegraph Group Ltd