Bubba Watson and the Waffle House

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 18^th 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.