BUBBA WATSON, AN AMERICAN WHO DOESN'T TRAVEL WELL

FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH WEBSITE
By OLIVER BROWN
Americans are, in the words of wisecracking Australian golfer Stuart Appleby, “like a bag of prawns on a hot day — they don’t travel well”.
To take this observation to its logical extreme, Bubba Watson (pictured right) is a prawn that has been peeled, dried and then left to curl up at the edges under a steaming Parisian sun.
The remarks last weekend by this mulleted resident of Bagdad, Florida, about his foray to la cite d’amour were so staggeringly reductive, of such oceangoing crassness, that they warrant a brief re-airing.
The Arc de Triomphe? “The arch I drove around in a circle.” The Palace of Versailles? “The castle that we’re staying next to.”
And what, pray, did he make of the Louvre? Surely our diligent exchange student found delights to detain him there? “A building beginning with ‘L’.”
Watson behaved at the French Open in the fashion of every oafish American tourist you dread to encounter in the patisseries of Old Europe.
He is the buffoon who orders a cappuccino, and then bleats about how it compares to the supersized version at his branch of Dunkin’ Donuts. (Believe me, such behaviour is not merely confined to the continent. At Heathrow recently I watched as a brassy New York woman returned a perfectly serviceable-looking latte to the Starbucks counter. “My son says this is terrible!”) Generalisations on cultural outlook can be invidious. But nowhere is the insularity of the American view better crystallised than in that cosseted commune of the US PGA Tour.
Dear Bubba is simply the front man for a legion of good ol’ boys who rarely travel, rarely experiment, and who as such exhibit all the aesthetic appreciation of Ronald McDonald.
Some positively revel in their redneck roots. Take Boo Weekley, who built a cult of personality from his stories of wrestling alligators out on grandaddy’s back porch.
At the 2008 Ryder Cup, in a corner of Kentucky that seethed with parochialism, he whipped up the crowd by pretending to ride his driver cowboy-style down the first fairway.
Weekley almost made the Scots spit out their shortbread when, ahead of the 2007 Open, he pronounced upon Carnoustie cuisine: “Has been rough on that food. Ain’t got no sweet tea, and ain’t got no sweet chicken.”
The scholar that is Boo hails from a section of the southern states that Jeremy Clarkson once sought — successfully — to provoke by driving a car sprayed pink and emblazoned with such slogans as ‘Man-love rules’ and ‘Nascar sucks’.
It can be no coincidence that the Floridian once played on the same high-school golf team as Watson. Boo and Bubba: what a brain trust that is.
But we should be careful to be too dismissive, for the two represent the American game’s most powerful constituency: namely, reactionaries of scant sense but no little wealth, and of an overwhelmingly gun-toting Republican bent.
Savour this, if you will, from Fred Funk on former President George W Bush: “Huge Bush fan, hate the Democrats.” Or how about the political wisdom of Kenny Perry?
“I love Bush. I just think he speaks about God and is a Christian man, and that’s what I’m about.”
Padraig Harrington once confessed to me his disgruntlement at the narrow terms of debate on the tour circuit, and how a Democrat was about as rare as a hen’s wisdom tooth.
With the Open approaching, it is again open season on those mollycoddled Yanks who cannot cope with the links test when removed from their beloved Bermuda grass.
Golfers of Bubba Watson’s ilk can make $3million or more each season by performing on auto-pilot at dismally-attended tournaments in Texas or Illinois.
It is a reality to leave men like Jack Nicklaus thoroughly nonplussed.
“The fact is that if you want to be an international star then you have to go and play internationally,” he said. “If you don’t, you only have yourself to blame.”
Scott Hoch, perhaps the foremost spokesman of the Bubba generation and a man with cigars the size of vanity, paid no heed to that logic. The 55 year-old once memorably described St Andrews as the “biggest piece of mess” he had ever seen.
Hoch opts not even to attempt to qualify for The Open these days. But if we ever doubted for his fondness for august events, we should be consoled that next year, he hopes to play in the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open instead.
EDITOR'S FOOTNOTE:
It's a fact that many Americans live and die without ever leaving the state they were born in. The vast majority do not have a passport and never leave America's shores.
Criticism by the few who do is by no means new. Many moons ago the late great Sam Snead compared playing golf in Britain - he was talking after winning the 1946 Open at St Andrews - was akin to "going camping" ... roughing it with no luxuries.
Mind you, we were just emerging from World War II. I don't recall the United States suffering many bombing raids between 1939 and 1945. Pearl Harbour, yes; Hot Springs, Virginia (Snead lived and died there), No.   
Who was it that said: The more things change, the more they stay the same.