MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 10, 2021

Bubba Watson

Quick Quotes

Q. It was kind of an up-and-down round for you there today. You had a nice birdie at 12 and then a real nice one at 14. Tell us a little bit about those holes.

BUBBA WATSON: Yeah, so 12, you know, it was when the wind was coming through or the storm was getting closer, I guess. So the wind would come and then it would go away. So I actually waiting on the player on No. 11, I had a pitching wedge in my hand, and then when I was waiting I switched to a 9-iron, and then after I hit and I waited for his ball to stop, then I went back to a pitching wedge because the wind kind of died down, so I hit real fast, hit a great shot in there just below the hole, roughly we'll see 15 feet, made it.

And then 14, drive, I cut too much, hit it in the rough, then tried to hit an 8-iron, big ol' cut 8-iron, just missed it to the left of the green, which is not where you want to be at all, and somehow I rolled it in from off the green and made a birdie there. So it was one of those I got lucky to make birdie there.

Q. And then 15 a little bit unlucky there catching the slope?

BUBBA WATSON: Yeah, it just didn't come out the way -- I thought it was going to come out a little hotter. My chip shot just kind of -- I don't know, it was almost like a ping-pong ball, put so much spin on it, it didn't really come out like I thought. I thought it was going to hit and run, and that's three days in a row I've been in that water. Even when I missed the water on the second shot I still hit it in on the third shot. I think I'm 4-over on that hole. Bogey, bogey, double. Yeah, that's not good.

Q. And then 16 had a lot of spin on it, too.

BUBBA WATSON: Yeah, so 16, Abraham hit 9-iron with a little draw, landed it just on the green, just over the bunker, went we'll say 15 feet past the hole. I hit the exact same shot but a cut, but mine landed about two feet shorter on the fringe or the collar, made it kick harder to the left, so I hit it down there, and then I hit a good putt, ran out too much, and then I hit another good putt and just barely lipped out. So making a 7 and then a bogey after hitting the green on 16 is not a way to finish. But making two pars coming down the stretch -- it took me 50 minutes to -- 50 to an hour to two-putt on 18, but I finally got the two-putt in there.

Q. You talked about how you could tell with the storm coming in, but did the wind change during the early part of the round?

BUBBA WATSON: Yeah, I mean, when we started out there wasn't much wind. It was very light. It was probably like this. Different direction than this, but like this.

And then as the round -- we kept getting along, about No. 7, the wind started picking up harder, all the way until we got done with No. 18 -- well, the first time we got done with 18.

So yeah, we knew it was coming. There was going to be some gusty winds, and it was very tough when we played especially in those holes -- they're already tough holes without wind, 10, 11, 12. And so then you've got the par-5s where you can easily guess wrong on the winds. So yeah, that was a tough stretch that we got some wind, but it was -- we all have to deal with it at some point. Four days of golf, you're going to have some tricky weather once in a while.

Q. After you won here for the first time and the jacket ceremony was over, what happened next for you? Where did you go after that?

BUBBA WATSON: One of these buildings. I don't know. I have no idea. I was just happy to have the Green Jacket on, so I could care less where we went.

Q. What was that night like after that?

BUBBA WATSON: Well, my night was different than most people's, right. I adopted my son Caleb two weeks before, only spent three nights with him because of some other adoption stuff in Arizona, had to go back to Arizona, and then a lot of stuff went on, and then my wife said, 'Why don't you go get some rest and go to Augusta early?' So I came to Augusta on Friday early. So I just wanted to get home. Long story short, I just wanted to get home, and then I won. I didn't get home until 3:30. My plane landed around 3:00. Took around 30 minutes to get to the house, and then I was up at 6:00 feeding my son for the first time.

Gosh, I don't know where we went. We were over here, there was some interviews in this building -- I don't know, there's so many buildings.

Q. Did you do a club dinner?

BUBBA WATSON: Yeah, the members' dinner upstairs, went in there, and some pros were with me, the pros that went down -- Rickie Fowler, Ben Crane, Aaron Baddeley, went down and watched me finish on 10. They celebrated with me on 10 when I won, and then they actually stayed around and went upstairs and we ate, and then just hung out.

Gosh, and then I got a couple phone calls from high up in the government, vice president and president, which was a cool honor, and so yeah, a lot of the -- you're not allowed cell phones here by the way. There was a member that gave me their cell phone and said, This is the vice president of the United States. So yeah, we went and did some interviews downstairs, as well. I remember an ESPN interviews downstairs. So yeah, we went to probably four different buildings it felt like. There was a lot of interviews going on, and then I went home for a day before I went to New York to do some more interviews.