Ping. The universal sound of scoring a win in video games.

Sometimes I get ahead of myself. Like with the Masters. Didn’t realize that the mass media would go after Bubba Watson following his second Masters win. Should have, but I didn’t watch. My bad. He’s becoming the anti-Tiger. Both pure natural talents. Tiger was aimed, trained, honed to be the best that ever was. We can see his fire. Golf commenters are quick to say we who tune out when he’s not there don’t care about golf but only celebrity.

Not true. People are drawn to greatness, in whatever form it may take. We’re all like sunflowers to a certain extent. We turn toward the bright light and are nourished by it. I’m a Scot. I know what golf is. The cussedest, most awful, criminal ordeal of a sport ever invented. My people invented it. St. Andrews in Scotland is not a cathedral; it’s an inferno reenacting the Book of Job. Tiger suffers. He has been made to suffer the ignominies of the damned. Riches, porn stars, pissed off model wife, humiliation, physical ills, ESPN ridicule… All for the greatest golfer who ever lived. He doesn’t have to catch Nicklaus. Nicklaus never played against the amazingly talented field Tiger has had to. Just turn the hand over. We like to see the lofty brought down.

Enter Bubba Watson. Like Tiger, a natural talent. But he never had a golf lesson. No years of monastic obsession followed by orgiastic explosion. He doesn’t even seem to suffer. He just walks up to the ball and hits it. Can this be right in a world of professional golf analysts and announcer know it alls?

Funny. The golf press doesn’t know what to do. Guy just won his second Masters. He’s a southern Christian. Ooh. Bad. He’s a family man with an adopted 3 yr old son. Hmmm. So he went to the Waffle House to celebrate with his family and his preacher, and suddenly it’s controversial. Why? How?

Answers don’t actually matter. Just imagine the media edifice grappling with black, white, ratings (gasp), and the sea changes in a sport they have never understood. They despise everybody who plays a rich man’s ‘game,’ excepting Obama, but they cover it because there are ratings potentialities. What if they move from the Plutocrat Tiger to the Christian Bubba, with his adopted son and pastor guest at the Waffle House? What will they do? Whatever will they do?

What if Bubba Watson is the Bubba, er, Bobby Jones of a new generation of passionate, natural golf?

What if?