Golfer Bubba Watson goes a long way for laughs

Reporting from La Jolla —

Add another category of excellence to the resume of Bubba Watson, one of golf’s longest hitters.

Quickest quipster.

He just turned 33 on Nov. 5, so there is much golf ahead, presumably even a few major titles. He has won three times on the PGA Tour, including the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in La Jolla last winter. That brought him to Southern California on Monday, for media day and the beginning of the promotional push for the Jan. 26-29 tournament.

That also put a microphone in his hands, and he handled that as deftly as the driver with which he occasionally hits golf balls 400 yards. Jay Leno’s job wasn’t threatened, but Bubba was no bust when it came to verbal swings.

He took the podium, said he was scared to death in these situations, and then spent the next 20 minutes disproving that.

He described his first tee shot ever in this tournament, the 2004 event then called the Buick Open.

“Here’s this long-hitting, goofy dude named Bubba,” he said. “Lots of TV cameras around. Lots of people watching. And I rope hooked it.”

He was asked whether he was going to make any equipment changes this year.

“Yup, going to the belly putter,” he said, giggling along with the audience. “I just get a new set of the same clubs every year. I stay with the Pings. Nobody else wants me.”

Watson described his relationship with Phil Mickelson, who had a chance to catch him on the 18th hole of the Torrey Pines tournament if he made an eagle from the fairway, over water.

“At first, when I got on the tour, I didn’t really like the guy,” Watson said. “Of course, I didn’t know him. He would just kind of show up and then be gone. I was always wondering, did he park in the same parking lot with the rest of us guys?

“Now, I love him. It’s an honor to call him a friend. You get to hang out with guys a little more at team things like the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup. You learn a lot from guys like Phil. I really like him now. I wouldn’t take a bullet for him, you know, but I’d help him out.”

Watson, who had made a birdie putt on No. 18 on the final day, knew that the only way Mickelson could force a playoff was with an eagle from about 80 yards away, said he had conflicting emotions about Mickelson then.

“When he had Bones [caddy Jim Mackay] tend the flag, I hated him,” Watson said. “When he missed, I loved him.”

Later, Watson talked about how this all started, in his big family yard in the Florida Panhandle town of Bagdad.

“I was 6,” he said, “and my mom told my dad he couldn’t play golf on Saturdays unless he took me along. So, it was really my mom [Molly] who got me started in golf.”

That was Watson’s way of lightening up the emotional year he spent in 2010, as his father, Gerry, battled cancer and eventually lost that battle, nine days after Watson’s appearance with the US. team in the Ryder Cup in Wales in October. Gerry is also Bubba’s given name.

“My dad got the club pro to cut off an old nine iron to my size,” Watson said. “Good thing the club pro was left-handed. My dad taught me how to swing, and the basics. He wasn’t very good. He couldn’t break 100.

“Then, I took a Wiffle ball and started hitting it around the yard. I’d try all sorts of different ways to hit it. I was like a kid with any other toy. It was my G.I. Joe.”

In general, Watson said he learned the game a lot differently than many of the other pros did.

“Take Jim Furyk,” he said. “He learned the most important thing was to hit the ball on the fairway. So he does, but he doesn’t hit it very far. I was taught to just hit it as far as I could, and then, if I got better at the other parts of the game, that would be even better.”

Watson is always among the top distance drivers in the game. When he was on the Nationwide Tour, he led in driving average at 334 yards, and his PGA Tour averages are only slightly lower. He once hit a drive 422 yards in a Nationwide event in Arizona and also hit one 416 in the 2010 Sony tournament in Hawaii.

Still, he considers his best long drive the one he hit on 18 on the Sunday of last winter’s Farmers. He estimated it went about 340, paltry by his standards.

“But it went straight, and it was one of those that, when you do it under pressure, you are really proud,” he said.

He hit his next shot into the left trap, got it up and out to 12 feet and sank the birdie putt. Then he had to sweat out the Mickelson drama, and only when that missed [Mickelson’s ball mark on the eagle try was about four feet directly right of the pin] could Watson breathe.

“Phil, of all people, with a wedge in his hand,” Watson said. “I couldn’t even look. Those two minutes of waiting felt like an hour.”

Watson has played in 16 Grand Slam events. His closest call was losing in a playoff for the 2010 PGA title at Whistling Straits. His three tour titles have been the Travelers, the Zurich and the Farmers.

“I’m trying to get an insurance company to sponsor the majors,” he said.

Drum roll.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com