BEING A LONGSHOT SUITS WATSON.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

Bubba's the name. Hitting a golf ball out of sight is his game.

PGA Tour rookie Bubba Watson makes his first appearance at Pebble Beach this week, taking his tour-leading driving average of 324.9 yards into the AT&T National Pro-Am on the Monterey Peninsula in Northern California.

Tiger Woods said early in his career - when John Daly was in the midst of a seven-year tour driving-title run that never topped a yearly average of 306.8 yards- that future tour players were going to be bigger, more athletic and capable of hitting the ball much longer than anyone imagined.

The leading edge of that future appears to have arrived with Bubba.

He included a blast of 398 yards en route to a fourth-place finish in his first tour start - at the Sony Open in Hawaii - and has brought with him the kind natural power that leaves the longest hitters of the tour's still-young old guard in awe.

``I don't have that shot,'' Woods said after watching Watson - playing two groups ahead at the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan - apparently use an iron to drive the green on a 323-yard par-4 hole.

Watson said later he hit a hybrid club, ``basically just like a 1-iron.''

Clarification noted, and it might be a moot point:

``I feel like Fred Funk,'' said Valencia resident Jason Gore, comparing his own impressive length off the tee to one of the tour's shortest hitters when asked to describe Watson's driving prowess.

Gore and Watson played on the Nationwide Tour in 2005, Gore earning Nationwide Player of the Year honors and a midseason ``Battlefield Promotion'' to the PGA Tour, where he averaged 311.3 yards off the tee.

``I feel like I just bust it,'' Gore said, ``and he hits it like 50 yards by me. It's ridiculous. ... Just everything that you need to be a long striker of the ball is put in one package with that guy. Plus, he's not afraid.''

Watson, who finished 21st in earnings on the 2005 Nationwide Tour - which awards PGA Tour cards to its top 20 money winners - got his promotion because Gore was no longer on the money list after moving up early.

``I sent him a box of chocolates and I sent his wife two dozen roses,'' Watson said.

Then, the 6-foot-4, flexible and long-limbed left-hander let his pink-shafted driver do the sweet-talking for him in golf's major league, where his good nature and gargantuan drives quickly have made Bubba a fan favorite if not yet a household name.

``It's exciting because this is what I've wanted to do,'' he said after signing autographs for as long as the gallery requested in the wake of his 67-70-66-65 tour debut at the Sony Open, where he averaged 336.3 yards off the tee.

``This is what I've tried to do. This is what I've worked hard at,'' said the 27-year-old former University of Georgia golfer, who has taken anything but the traditional route to the tour.

Lessons?

He's never had one, if you don't count the advice his dad gave him along with the reshafted 9-iron he handed Bubba at age 6:

``He said, 'Hit it hard, then you'll be able to learn how to hit it straight. That's one thing you can learn. But you can't learn to hit it long.' ''

Watson took that advice to heart and has been blasting at full power almost ever since - while making it look easy.

Fitness?

``My wife has tried a few times to get me to work out,'' Watson said. ``I don't see myself doing that.''

He said he might be willing to ride a bike, if he doesn't have to go a long way, but ``there will be no yoga, you won't see me lifting any weights over 100 pounds, nothing like that.''

Favorite activity off the course?

``I just like to sleep,'' Bubba said at the Buick Invitational, where he made the cut in his second tour start and averaged 313.5 yards driving. ``I think Tiger and his caddie went out running yesterday, and I was like, 'You won't see me doing that.' And my caddie won't be running either.''

Despite that, Watson and caddie John Ritterbeck are expected to be a big attraction again this week at Pebble Beach, especially when Ritterbeck reaches into the bag to hand Bubba his pink-shafted weapon of choice.

Watson can't explain his length, nor is he much interested in it, apart from its value as a topic of conversation, which he loves and partakes in engagingly.

``They say it's because I use my arc, my long arms, and I use every bit of it,'' he said of his driving distance, which produced a Nationwide Tour- record blast of 422 yards at the 2004 Gila River Golf Classic. ``I have a little bit of a cut, but I can twist pretty good and it just recoils really fast at impact.

``It's just one of those things that happened to work out. I do everything it takes to hit it hard, and somehow I do it.''

At this point, better than anyone in the history of the tour.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

TIGER WOODS

Box:

ON THE GREEN

BY DAVE SHELBURNE