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Friday, December 8, 2023 Charting a new course through golf's pivotal year

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Bubba Watson finds water 3 times, cards an 11, and then walks off at Bay Hill

Bubba Watson was a trendy pick to win this year's Arnold Palmer Invitational, but after a sextuple-bogey 11 on a par-5, he finished the first round dead last and decided to end his week after 18 holes.

By Brendan Porath

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Bubba Watson, one of the hottest players on the PGA Tour, did the full John Daly routine on Thursday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. After almost a two-year winless drought following the 2012 Masters, Watson has a win and two second-place finishes in his last four events and was even listed at the top of fantasy guru Rob Bolton's power rankings for this week's event. Well, things didn't go as expected for the temperamental Bubba, who walked off at Bay Hill following an ugly round of 83.

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The recent streaking form went completely off the rails at Bay Hill's par-5 6th hole, where Watson splashed three balls into the water and finished with a sextuple-bogey 11. Here's the ugly ShotTracker map from PGATour.com:

Screen_shot_2014-03-20_at_12

Here's a recreation of his four tee balls that never found the fairway, from Golf Channel:

After those three water balls and misadventures around the lake, he finally got in the hole on his 11th stroke, a two-foot tap-in. The disaster was one shot better than Daly's 12 on the par-4 16th last week at Innisbrook.

The 11 also put him 11-over for the day, and he finished DFL with an 83. Then he decided he'd had enough and withdrew, which will bring the consternation from many huffy golf watchers and media types who largely consider Bubba a frosty guy. Here's his final ugly card, which included a triple bogey on top of the 6-over mark at No. 6:

Screen_shot_2014-03-20_at_12

Bubba, who said after his win at Riviera that this was a "year of rejoicing," had apparently had enough. We'll find out if there's actually an injury or something wrong with him, but the WD is almost certainly due to the 11 on No. 6 and his hopeless spot at the very bottom of the leaderboard. He walks away 21 shots off the pace set by early leader Adam Scott. UPDATE -- Bubba, an Isleworth local in Orlando, blamed his allergies for the poor round and WD:

Thanks for coming, Bubba.

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