Watson: "Golf is boring - reduce fields and scrap cuts"

Bubba Watson is one of the last players you would brand boring. His swashbuckling style of golf is matched by his colourful G/Fore outfits, green golf balls and pink driver.

But the two-time Masters champion thinks golf is boring. The reason? Slow play. The solution? Cutting fields.

“When I say boring, slow play,” he adds. “We made the cut last week at the John Deere Classic. There were around 80 players who made it and we still went round in five hours.  I’m like, ‘what are we doing?’ Who wants to play for five hours? I’ve got sleeping and stuff I’ve got to do.

“We’ve got to speed up and the only way I think we can do that in professional golf is to cut fields. 156 players in one field is just too many, you can’t do it.”

In conjunction with reducing field sizes, he also wants to get rid of the halfway cut.

“I won a tournament and Steve Stricker almost won last week by making the cut on the number,” he said. “That one stroke can make me miss a cut and it can hurt that tournament, hurt your emotions, hurt your FedEx Cup points and in many other different ways.”

We caught up with Watson at a G/Fore media event before the Open at Royal Birkdale.