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"  Consider Bubba Watson the maverick of the PGA Tour. Beyond his career-defining victory this time last year at The Masters, Watson is known for his tomfoolery off the greens, including making rock videos as a member of the pseudo boy band Golf Boys, a penchant for oversharing on Twitter (@bubbawatson), and, of course, that hot pink driver of his. But Watson is unapologetic about his unconventional place in pro golf, and sponsors are lining up to work with the refreshingly candid left-handed driver. Enter Oakley, who recently added Watson to their roster of pro golfer apparel endorsers. Our intrepid reporteress, Lady Esquire, caught up with golf&amp;#039;s wild card superstar last week in New York \u2014 he was in town promoting his new relationship with Oakley \u2014 to chat about his style philosophy, the life of a famous athlete, and the perks of being &amp;quot;a redneck named Bubba.&amp;quot; Esquire.com: OK, so, tell me a little about your personal style. Bubba Watson: It&amp;#039;s awesome. That was easy. Next question. ESQ: Agreed. I saw your Oakley looks downstairs, the ones you&amp;#039;re scheduled to wear while defending your title run in Augusta. Do you have a favorite? BW: I like them all \u2014 after all, I&amp;#039;m wearing all of them. But I&amp;#039;ll tell you after I play. Whichever one I play the best in, that&amp;#039;ll be my favorite. But the one that interests me the most is the white and grey top with the breathable side panels. It still looks like a golfer, but it pushes the envelope a little bit \u2014 as Oakley is known to do \u2014 with regard to the athletic fit and the performance components. ESQ: Seems like Oakley is a good fit for you. They&amp;#039;re sporty, but bold. You must be loving the colors. BW: Definitely! I like bright colors and it will be a change from last year, where I wore all white on the day I won the tournament. But really, my favorite thing about being linked to Oakley is getting to hang with the cool people, the cool athletes \u2014 like the X-Games guys. Those guys play sports where they can really hurt themselves, and, well, I just play golf. I&amp;#039;m like the wimpy guy over here. ESQ: And are those guys brave enough to wear neon \u2014 like you? BW: Yeah, I&amp;#039;m not afraid of anything, or, well, any color [points to his neon yellow sunglasses on his head]. My two favorite colors are lime green and hot pink. I mean, I really like pink. And I don&amp;#039;t care who knows it. I&amp;#039;m already married, sooo\u2026 ESQ: So you don&amp;#039;t take any heat from anyone else on the tour about your style? BW: I don&amp;#039;t listen to those people. Who listens to golfers? They&amp;#039;re boring. If I want to wear camouflage on the golf course during a tournament, I will. And I have.  Watson with the Oakley-designed outfits he&amp;#039;ll be wearing during The Masters  ESQ: Where did this attitude come from, this not caring what people think about the way you dress? BW: Well, first of all, I&amp;#039;m a redneck. And we can wear whatever because we just really don&amp;#039;t care about those things. And when you&amp;#039;re a redneck named Bubba, you really don&amp;#039;t care. No, but really, my dad \u2014 who was a tough guy, a Green Beret \u2014 always looked nice and wore these bright Sansabelt pants. He always said, &amp;quot;You have two options: You can be a follower or you can be a leader. And you don&amp;#039;t ever want to follow anybody.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s kind of become my philosophy about everything. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s a good one. What has been the best part of this past year? Winning The Masters was a game changer, no? BW: Of course. I&amp;#039;m mostly just getting used to the idea that people want to hear what I have to say. Like this, for example. But there have definitely been some fun experiences. Like throwing out the first pitch at a Mets game. I grew up a diehard Yankees fan, and my mom was like, &amp;quot;How could you do that? How could you throw out a pitch at a Mets game?&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;Well, mom, the Yankees didn&amp;#039;t ask me \u2014 the Mets did.&amp;quot; And when a professional baseball team asks you to throw out the first pitch, that&amp;#039;s an honor, and you do it. ESQ: Truth. You&amp;#039;re also crazy active on Twitter. I saw you thanking LeBron James for a pair of his Nike LeBronold Palmers. BW: Ah, yes. You know Arnold Palmer? Well there&amp;#039;s the guy, the legend \u2014 but I&amp;#039;m talking about the drink. Where you put lemonade over iced tea \u2014 or maybe it&amp;#039;s iced tea over lemonade, I don&amp;#039;t know. Well, LeBron doesn&amp;#039;t play golf but his people, like his manager, they play and they came up with these shoes because apparently they drink Arnold Palmers all the time. So I saw the shoes about a year ago when he tweeted them, right around the Olympics, and I thought, I have to have those. So the first thing I did was text Chris Paul [of the L.A. Clippers] to tell him that I needed a pair. He asked LeBron for me, but apparently they were some limited edition thing, and not for sale. So I thought that was the end of that. But then I happened to meet LeBron at a game in Miami, and I was sitting next to his manager, so I asked again for a pair. And they got them for me! He brought them to me at the Orlando Magic game last week. And I love them, I tweeted them out immediately. ESQ: I saw! You tweet your shoes and socks a lot \u2014 and your socks are always so colorful and fun. A real statement sock. BW: Who doesn&amp;#039;t love a statement sock? I mean, we won&amp;#039;t go in to details, but your underwear has to be bright, too. Oakley is making underwear now and I joked when I was signing this deal \u2014 I tweeted something like, &amp;quot;Only reason Oakley wanted me was to be their underwear model. Photo shoot to come soon.&amp;quot; ESQ: Damn. Well you know you have to follow through, now. You have over 800,000 followers! BW: Oh, I can do it. It might not look right, but I can do it. I have no shame. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/style/interviews/a21837/bubba-watson-interview-041113/?src=rss>