Why Bubba Watson owes ‘Crash’ actor Michael Peña a watch

As a general rule, betting on yourself in a wager against a PGA Tour pro is bad business. Really bad business.

It’s bad business for a few reasons. For one, it’s much easier for a PGA Tour player to perform at the level of a professional golfer than it is for you to perform at the top of your game. For another, non-professional athletes have a bad tendency for underestimating their abilities relative to real-life pros. And that’s to say nothing of the difficulties that join properly handicapping a match between a professional golfer and an Average Joe.

But some betting opportunities are simply too good to pass up, even when they involve PGA Tour players, as former ‘Crash’ actor Michael Peña explained on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar.

The story begins at a celebrity golf tournament at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif., where Peña competed alongside Tiger Woods and a handful of other celebrities against Bubba Watson and his own roster of stars.

Before the match began, Bubba’s caddie Ted Scott spotted Peña working at the driving range.

“Bubba Watson, I told his caddie, ‘yeah I hit it 250. I hit it longer than that,’” Peña said. “His caddie said, ‘bro, what are you talking about? You can’t hit it 250 dude.’”

Suddenly, Scott called Bubba over, who shared a similar outlook on Peña’s long-drive skills. Trash-talking ensued, culminating in an invitation for Watson to put his money where his mouth was. Naturally, Bubba obliged.

“Bubba Watson bet me his watch I couldn’t hit it 250,” Peña remembers. “I got on the TrackMan, the first drive is 267. And Tiger’s like ‘you did say you were going to give him a watch.’”

But Peña says he never received a payout.

“He never gave it to me though,” he said.

Rather, he had to extract his bragging rights the hard way: sinking a 15-footer on the 18th at Riviera to beat Team Bubba and seal the tournament for himself.

“I did like a stutter-step and an upper-cut and I let out an ‘ahhh!’” Peña said with a laugh. “That and the hole-in-one are probably the best golf stories I have.”

To hear the rest of Peña’s Subpar interview, check out the video below.

James Colgan

Golf.com Editor

James Colgan is an assistant editor at GOLF, contributing stories for the website and magazine on a broad range of topics. He writes the Hot Mic, GOLF’s weekly media column, and utilizes his broadcast experience across the brand’s social media and video platforms. A 2019 graduate of Syracuse University, James — and evidently, his golf game — is still defrosting from four years in the snow, during which time he cut his teeth at NFL Films, CBS News and Fox Sports. Prior to joining GOLF, James was a caddie scholarship recipient (and astute looper) on Long Island, where he is from.