{"id":10490,"date":"2012-05-04T08:34:20","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T06:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/05\/golf-masters-champion-watson-to-skip-players-championship\/"},"modified":"2012-05-04T08:34:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T06:34:20","slug":"golf-masters-champion-watson-to-skip-players-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/golf-masters-champion-watson-to-skip-players-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf-Masters champion Watson to skip Players Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocatio\/spann\">May 3 (Reuters) &#8211; Masters champion Bubba Watson has opted to<br \/>\nmiss next week&#8217;s elite Players Championship at Sawgrass to spend<br \/>\nmore time at home with his wife Angie and their recently adopted<br \/>\ntwo-month-old son Caleb.<span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>American left-hander Watson announced the decision on his<br \/>\nTwitter feed on Thursday, saying he wanted to establish stronger<br \/>\nbonds with his family.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I need to spend more time with Caleb and Angie, plan to<br \/>\ntake at least a month off,&#8221; Watson tweeted. &#8220;The Players is one<br \/>\nof the best weeks of the year but bonding with my son and wife<br \/>\nis what it is all about right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Watson has played just once since winning his first major in<br \/>\na playoff with South African Louis Oosthuizen at the Masters,<br \/>\ntying for 18th at last week&#8217;s New Orleans Classic where he<br \/>\nrepeatedly said he was missing his family.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The long-hitting American had felt obliged to compete in New<br \/>\nOrleans since he was the defending champion.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sorry to disappoint fans but the Players has one of the<br \/>\nbest fields all year, tourney is more than fine without me,&#8221;<br \/>\nsaid Watson. &#8220;I feel blessed and excited that I get to spend<br \/>\nquality time with Caleb and Angie in the next few weeks.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The $9.5 million Players Championship, widely regarded as<br \/>\nthe unofficial fifth major, attracts one of the strongest fields<br \/>\nin golf. It will be played from May 10-13 at Ponte Vedra Beach<br \/>\nin Florida where South Korean K.J. Choi will defend his title.\t<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by<br \/>\nFrank Pingue)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 3 (Reuters) &#8211; Masters champion Bubba Watson has opted to miss next week&#8217;s elite Players Championship at Sawgrass to spend more time at home with his wife Angie and their recently adopted two-month-old son Caleb. American left-hander Watson announced the decision on his Twitter feed on Thursday, saying he wanted to establish stronger bonds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-10490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}