Bubba Watson is that most rare of breeds, an
interesting golfer. In a sport that features mostly pampered country club
Ken-doll types who one suspects have never done an honest day’s work in their
lives, Watson feels like the skunk at the garden party. He’s the guy in that
Polaner All Fruit commercial blurting out, “Would ya please pass the jelly?” He’s
the guy who showed up for his first Master’s appearance driving down Magnolia
Lane in the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard, giving Hootie Johnson the
vapors.
Unfortunately for polite society, Bubba Watson is a bizarrely
gifted golfer who not only hits it 340 off the tee but possesses otherworldly
imagination around the greens, and the ability to make his ball travel in
sweeping arcs from all directions seemingly at will. As a consequence of these
gifts, there he was in the dying light of a Sunday evening in Augusta, Georgia
walking off the 18th green into the arms of his adopted two year old
son and his former college basketball star of a wife, about to be fitted for
his second green jacket in three years.
After the cameras said good night, there was the champion’s
dinner, after which Bubba and family hit the road to head for home. That’s when
the trouble started. No, I don’t mean the usual athlete trouble like beating up
his wife then getting caught snorting coke at a strip club with mobsters kind
of trouble. No, this kind of trouble: 
Yes, that’s Bubba and his wife about to chow down on
a one AM Waffle House meal of hash browns and cinnamon buns. Our grand arbiters
of culture and their PC brethren were not amused. Somebody named Katherine
Tallmadge took to the airwaves denouncing Bubba for his horrible parenting, not
to mention the bad example he was setting for all Americans by eating in an establishment
that serves poison. Ms. Tallmadge, who apparently makes her living by nagging
the hell out of people over what they eat, insinuated that Bubba was a “gazillionaire
who was trying to make us all think he was one of us.” Ms. Tallmadge needs to
get out more. If she did she might learn that Mr. Watson has been eating at
Waffle Houses all of his life. It’s his favorite restaurant. In fact, after
winning his first green jacket in 2012 he suggested that he might have the
following year’s champions dinner catered by Waffle House. Hootie had to be
hospitalized for two weeks over that one.
I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Waffle House myself,
but I love Bubba Watson. Here’s a news flash for Katherine Tallmadge…where
Bubba decides to eat at one o’clock in the morning after winning the most
prestigious event in golf is none of your business. If she wants to drink soy
milk and eat free range tofu for breakfast it’s none of my business either.
Let Bubba be Bubba.
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