For more than a decade, Bubba Watson's hook from the pine straw on the 10th at Augusta National in 2012 has been celebrated as one of the great Masters shots, the moment that carried him into a green jacket. His longtime caddie Ted Scott, however, insists the most astonishing swing he ever witnessed from Watson at Augusta came two days earlier, on the 11th.
"Many people think that Bubba Watson shot on 10 in 2012 was the greatest shot at Augusta. It was not," Scott said. "In fact, it was on hole 11 on Friday. He was 300 par, um, right in the mix of it. He hit it in the right trees and we got in there and that ball was in what seemed to me like a bird had decided, you know what, I'm going to build a nest."
Scott, now a veteran on Scottie Scheffler's bag, described a scene in which the lie was so ugly that he had already accepted the best-case scenario was getting away with a bogey — and even that seemed fanciful. Watson, according to his caddie, was unmoved.
"And he got over it and he goes, 'Get out of my way. You know I'm known for hooking it,'" Scott recalled. "I said, 'Yes, you are, sir,' is what I said. But what I was thinking was, 'You freaking idiot. We're going to make a triple. Now we're not going to make the cut.' And he got in there and hit the sickest low duck hook 9 iron. It overhooked, ran down, caught the slope, and ran onto the front of the green. He put it for par. And to this day, that's the craziest shot I think I've ever seen in my entire life."
The story is in keeping with how those inside the game have always spoken about Watson, a left-handed two-time Masters champion whose feel for shaping the ball was considered the ceiling of the tour during his prime. Scott's insistence that the 11th-hole escape outranks the famous hook on 10 is likely to surprise many fans, for whom the 2012 playoff shot is embedded as the defining highlight reel of Watson's career.
Scott, whose self-deprecating style made him one of the most popular caddies on tour, was asked during the same conversation about his own playing career, which ended in him deciding the bag was a better fit than the clubs.
"I failed as a professional golfer," he said, by way of explaining why he became a caddie at all.
There was a more serious reflection on the emotional demands of the job, which Scott said frequently centre on managing a player through pressure rather than on club selection or yardage.
"Uh, dealing with a person. You know, human beings are difficult and stressful situations," he said. "So, as a caddy, uh, you're there during someone's most stressful times and you typically are listening and trying to solve that problem and sometimes we we are the problem."
On his current employer, Scheffler, Scott was predictably glowing — and predictably irreverent.
"If it's someone like Scotty Scheffler, probably could stop him a lot, but he doesn't really make bad decisions. I mean, he chose me as a caddy. That's the best decision he ever made, right? Kidding, guys. These are jokes."
Scott's Masters memories, though, kept returning to Watson. Whichever shot earns the historical gold medal, the 11th-hole duck hook now has its champion.