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Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Bubba Watson hits out of the rough on the ninth hole at the U.S. Open yesterday. Click photo for larger image.  Recovering from a near disaster
 Bubba Watson struggles to survives a triple bogey yesterday. Plus:  PG golf writer Gerry Dulac's Day Three recap
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When you incessantly go full bore, with a cement foot stomping that pedal against the floorboard, it is ridiculously tough to scale it back a notch.
Invariably, a time arrives when a step back is the perfect choice, one that will advance you the furthest in the long run.
Bubba Watson, the easy-to-fall-in-love-with left-hander from Bagdad, Fla., with a penchant for knowing just one speed -- wide open -- stood on the ninth tee box of this glorious golf course, on this immense U.S. Open third-round stage with his name atop the leader board by one stroke. And he did something uncharacteristic.
He left the driver in the bag. Reason out-grappled machismo and safety defeated risk.
Instead, Watson summoned the 4-iron from his caddie on the 477-yard par-4 ninth hole that plays to a par 5 for the Oakmont membership. He drilled one off the tee, setting himself up for a 5-iron into the spacious green.
But Watson came out of that second shot, drifting it left into a veritable judgment that carries life without parole -- Oakmont's rough.
Still, he kept it together -- after all, a pitch and a putt would give him par. He addressed the ball, mashed his club through that spinach and ... flub. The ball went about 10 feet, failing to reach the putting surface.
That is when Watson reverted to, quite possibly, the most substantial shortcoming you can possess in golf and an old skeleton for him -- a failure to be patient.
Hurriedly and perturbed, he jolted up to the ball, took a stance and whacked away. His lapse in judgment was obvious, and the result was punishing. The ball traversed through the green and into the rough on the other side, almost air-mailing the putting surface.
From there, Watson chipped on, missed a 15-footer then tapped in for 7, displacing his name from the top of the leader board as a result of the meltdown.
"It doesn't matter if you take your time or not, an impossible lie is an impossible lie," Watson said. "You read it, take all the time in the world. All I was trying to do is go to the center of the green, and it was fluffy, and I wanted to hit it quick."
Too quick, and it cost him. Then again, that is how Watson rolls. That mentality is what has propelled him to a spot in today's second-to-last group, in a third-place tie at 5 over and three shots off the lead.
"He's got a lovable personality," said his wife, Angie, a former University of Georgia and WNBA basketball player.
"And that's one of the reasons that I married him. He is very, very real and that is what people embrace. That is what they love about him."
No one will argue. Simply put, Watson is a John Daly-type figure to this generation of golf fans.
He's more T-shirt than Versace suit, more Budweiser than Beaujolais, and a $150,000-off-the-top to join country club seems about the last place you'd find this good ol' boy.
Take, for example, how Watson was going to kill some time after his round yesterday, on the eve of the biggest round of his life.
"Eat some cheeseburgers," he said. "And if it's light, shoot some baskets."
Yeah, he was going to play a game of HORSE with his wife and some pals in the driveway of his digs for the week, a rented house.
A wife who, yesterday, walked the course teetering on every shot.
"What I'm going through is just a fraction of the emotions that he is experiencing," she said afterward.
Emotions that, if kept under control, could result in Bubba Watson -- improbable as it might seem -- winning a major.
