 |
KOHLER, Wisc. — She sat in a golf cart in the sunshine in front of the stone clubhouse at Whistling Straits, huge crowds flowing along just outside the metal barricades a few feet away, her husband brushing in a few putts on the practice green a few yards away in preparation for his third round at the PGA Championship.
Angie Watson (her friends at Sir Oliver Mowat High School in Scarborough knew her as Angie Ball) could sit and enjoy it all Saturday, the anticipation of husband Bubba in contention for his major championship, the excitement of being on the inside of a major event.
None of it is taken for granted.
Earlier this year, Angie and Bubba were sitting in a doctor’s office at Duke University waiting to hear the plan and the details for her brain surgery.
“They were positive about how the surgery would turn out.” Angie said. “But it was still minor brain surgery.”
As if there is such a thing, she was told.
“Yeah,” she said with a small laugh.
It had started with headaches. The Watsons were going through a stressful time with Bubba’s dad battling throat cancer. They had taken a red-eye to visit him in Pensacola, Fla. Angie wasn’t feeling well and she isn’t one to complain. The former WNBA player had battled through knee and shoulder injuries during her career at the University of Georgia (that’s where they met when both were there on athletic scholarships) and the usual strains and sprains of the professional athlete.
“When she wants to go to the hospital, I know something’s wrong,” Bubba said.
The doctors said the headaches were caused by stress and dehydration, but in the course of their examination they found something else: What they said was a tumour on her pituitary gland.
Bubba, now faced with his dad and wife battling cancer, skipped the Texas swing on the Tour and after an agonizing two months, it looked like Angie would have to undergo surgery at Duke.
“We went through the pre-op consultation and they left us in the waiting room for about an hour,” Angie said. “Then the doctor came back in and said he and the head radiologist had looked the scans and everything over and said it wasn’t cancer.
“It was a complete weight lifted off my shoulders and Bubba’s shoulders.”
“It was an enlarged pituitary gland and so it wasn’t anything for a girl six foot or taller (Angie is 6-foot-2),” Bubba said. “So the first doctor told us the wrong diagnosis, but we didn’t know that at the time, so it was scary.”
When Bubba Watson told his part of the story earlier this week, he couldn’t hold back the tears.
“He’s an emotional person,” Angie said. “He’s got such a big heart and he cares so much. To be honest, it didn’t surprise me a bit.”
They’re an unlikely couple: She’s from suburban Toronto (her family is in Pickering now); he’s Bubba from Bagdad in the Florida panhandle.
Talk about culture shock visiting each other’s hometowns.
She handles her husband’s business off the course, but distances herself from his choice of colours (he has a pink shaft in his driver, lime green in his 4-wood and once owned a lime-green Lamborghini, which he bought after going back and graduating from Georgia in 2008. He got rid of it after three months.)
“I do not let her talk about my game,” Bubba said. “I don’t like talking about my game because there’s nothing to talk about. I just play golf. The one thing that’s nice about it is she understands what it takes to be good.”
They both understand how lucky they are.
chris.stevenson@sunmedia.ca