With 12 PGA Tour titles to his name and a Green Jacket hanging in his own locker at Augusta National, it’s hard to think of Bubba Watson being plagued by self-doubt. But look beyond the emotional victories that earned him the nickname ‘Blubba’, and there is a jitteriness that has always hinted at a man who has never felt quite at ease.
Anxiety has followed him for large parts of his life, but it was only when his game, body and mind started to spiral out of control that he realised he had reached breaking point. “Golf was killing me,” he writes in his memoir.
It was the summer of 2017 – just over six months after missing out on playing in the Ryder Cup – and he was so weak that he could barely hit the shots that had delivered two Masters wins. As he stood on the bathroom scales, the number wasn’t just flashing at him, it was “screaming”. The problem wasn’t how much weight he had put on, but how much he had lost.
At 73 kilos, he’d dropped almost 13 kilos in 12 months without any explanation as to why. He underwent several heart scans and blood tests and saw four different doctors who tried to reassure him that nothing was wrong.
Bubba just couldn’t believe it – and so chose not to. He convinced himself he was dying and it was only when he stopped bottling everything up that the weight returned.
“Ultimately, I accepted that it was my mind and not my body that was causing the stress, anxiety, pain and weight loss,” he writes. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was depressed. I never thought about it that way. It was just an out-of-control mind, racing with fear and anxiety.”
Since opening up to friends and family about his mental health battles, Bubba has found better ways to cope with the negative thoughts and fears that left him lying on a hospital bed three times. Sharing his experiences with the world was just part of that recovery process.
Throughout his book,, Watson goes into unstinting, granular detail about the overwhelming pressure he felt from winning, as well as the frequent clashes with the media, players and his now former caddie, Ted Scott.
