Easy to root for Bubba

There's evidence longer than one of Bubba Watson's drives supporting how professional athletes live in skyscraping social and economic stratospheres. Their different rules, privileges and opportunities make it fruitless to compare our lives to theirs, even if we think following them on Twitter provides some prevailing insight.

And yet Watson, among the biggest names at the Travelers Championship this weekend, is the best evidence yet that adopting a child remains the one endeavor that doesn't discriminate: It's deeply personal, perpetually exhaustive and emotionally vexing even for the privileged.

Much of this story has been told — and told brilliantly — on ESPN's Outside the Lines last weekend. Gene Wojciechowski captured the travails of Bubba and Angie Watson's adoption process, illustrating how pain, persistence and patience led to little Caleb.

It needs to be told again.

If for no other reason than to give you a guy to root for at River Highlands.

Bubba Watson married the former Angie Ball, once a women's basketball player at Georgia and later in the WNBA. Angie told her future husband a medical condition prevented her from having children. They decided to adopt.

They began the process in 2004.

Caleb arrived in 2012.

Eight years.

Eight years of harboring doubt, confusion, disappointment.

"I thought it would be a simple process," Bubba said on the ESPN piece. "We love each other. House, bank account … it got so emotional. So draining."

The Watsons thought they had two matches. Both times the birth parents rejected them. The reasons? No one knows. It works that way. Bank accounts and celebrity be damned.

And then the process begins anew. You wait for a match. And wait. And wait. You wonder. All while the birth parents decide whether you're sufficient.

"It overwhelms you," Bubba said. "You start thinking, 'are we not good people?' You're always asking yourself, 'why?'"

It wasn't long before the Masters in April that Caleb arrived for the Watsons.

Bubba won the Masters while Caleb was a few weeks old.

Gene Wojciechowski: "He wanted to hold his son more than a trophy."

So rather than celebrating his greatest golfing victory, he arrived home from the Masters at 3 a.m. Monday. He was feeding Caleb by 7.

The Watsons have custody of Caleb. But not full custody. Not yet. Just another part of the process. It's doubtful the unthinkable will happen. But the process almost demands fatalism until the ink dries.

Pause here for full disclosure: This issue is very personal to yours truly. My wife and I adopted our son two years ago this July. Were it not for her persistence and diligence with details, I would not know my greatest joy.

Bubba Watson wouldn't know me if I tripped him on the eighth green with a 7-iron. And yet we share something. Watson does with all adoptive parents. We're quite a fraternity.

"I can't really relay how deeply personal it is," said Dave Pfeiffer of New London, who adopted his son Darius with his wife, Linda, a former two-sport coach at the high school.

They are involved in the process again.

"A lot of people from the outside can't appreciate it or relate to it," Pfeiffer said. "You open yourself up to a lot when you talk about it."

You open yourself up to so many enlightened souls who feel the need to unburden themselves on the topic. Sort of makes you want to stick your fingers in your ears and make that loud NAANANANANNAAA sound.

We hear things like "It's not your kid anyway," and "you're just buying a child." That's just what we can print.

In the end, though, you get the grand prize. They wake you in the middle of the night, do "happy dance" in the living room, babble, play Little League, the tuba, sing in the chorus, get the lead in the play, talk back, graduate and cost you millions in tuition.

Wouldn't have it any other way.

And so if you see Bubba on the course this week, wish him a belated Happy Father's Day. Bet he tips his cap.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.