Bubba Watson Apologizes for Elkington Incident

AVONDALE, La. -- Les bon temps did not roule Friday afternoon at the Zurich Classic when Bubba Watson and Steve Elkington had a catfight on the back nine of the TPC Louisiana. Apparently, what happened was this:

Bubba detected some movement while he was trying to play his approach shot from the right rough on the 10th hole. He felt it wasn't the first time Elkington was moving at inappropriate times and unleashed a torrent of expletives, a portion of which was captured by the Golf Channel's microphones.

Afterward, Elkington and Watson settled their differences in the scoring hut. They were playing with Shigeki Maruyama who emerged from the glass-walled tent with his usual smile, bobbing and weaving like Sugar Ray Leonard. "Big problem," Shigeki said as he walked away.

Elkington, who finished the day three shots off Briny Baird's lead of eight under par, left without speaking to the media. Watson, on the other hand, apologized to virtually anyone who wasn't moving, as it were. He said he and Elkington had "hugged it out."

"I want to apologize to everybody in the tournament," Watson said. "Everybody who heard it, whoever saw it, especially Steve and Shigeki and their caddies. I heard something and I took it out on them and shouldn't have done it. I apologize to the tournament, to anybody that's involved in this tournament, all the volunteers, all the caddies, the spectators, the kids that came out here. I'm not like Charles Barkley. I'd love to be a role model. I make mistakes. My mistake was I got angry today.

"Everything's good. He's not mad. He's looking at me like this is like his son, basically. I'm a lot younger, he took me aside and said, 'Look, be strong in what you're doing and make sure you don't do that.' I apologized to him as best I could."

--Jim Moriarty