It was the wonder shot that propelled him to his first major, but Bubba Watson said on Wednesday he’d try and avoid a repeat at this year’s Masters of the astonishing lob that helped him win at Augusta.
“Hopefully I hit the fairway from now on so I don’t need to practice that shot anymore,” he said of the high hook he hit from the pine straw at the Georgia club’s 10th hole, the second hole in a victorious sudden-death playoff.
Watson’s ball sailed through a gap in the trees and onto the green, rolling to a stop 10 feet from the hole, and helped him defeat South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen minutes later.
The memory was alive in Watson’s comments in a conference call to promote his defence of The Masters at Augusta National, golf’s first major championship of the year, scheduled for April 11-14.
Watson said it might not even have been the most difficult shot he hit that week, recalling a shot from ground trampled down by the gallery at the 17th in the final round of regulation play among several others.
“Obviously the playoff shot was the most important and the most exciting, but the other ones were difficult, just nobody cared what Bubba Watson was doing those other days or other shots,” he said.