Will Win at the Travelers Jump-Start Bubba Watson in Time for the British Open?

By any measure, it was a pretty good Sunday for Bubba Watson.

The 36-year-old Floridian woke up within a shot of the lead at the Travelers Championship, saw the deficit become a three-shot advantage after the final round’s midway point and endured some iffy decision-making down the stretch before vanquishing Paul Casey in a sudden-death playoff.

It was the eighth win of his career, his second at the Travelers event, and resulted in seven more figures being added to a bank account that had already swelled to better than $28 million in lifetime earnings.

But even more important is what it might mean going forward.

While he’s toting a No. 5 world ranking and is firmly ensconced among the most prolific active statesiders not named Tiger or Phil, what Watson has yet to manage in a 12-year professional career is transporting his acumen across the Atlantic to make a grand statement on the game’s oldest stages.

Though he’s won twice at Augusta and bagged top-five finishes at both the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship, he’s been about as comfortable in Great Britain as a redneck at a royal wedding.

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Six trips to the British Open have yielded three missed cuts and three irrelevant finishes, the most recent of which came last year at Royal Liverpool—where he also managed to annoy the locals with a comprehensive lack of Beatles knowledge and handle himself with a demeanor Golf.com’s Eamon Lynch dubbed “a master class in crass” on the way to shooting a first-round 76.

So maybe Lynch is right; maybe Watson’s the ugly American.

Or maybe it’s a matter of his pre-trip preparation.

In the weeks leading up to his Masters victories in 2012 and 2014, Watson had scored no fewer than five top-five finishes in eight events. He tried on his first green jacket after a second-place finish at the WGC-Cadillac Championship and a tie for fourth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, then donned No. 2 after a blistering four-week stretch that included a win at the Northern Trust Open and a tie for second at the WGC-Cadillac.

In fact, before Sunday’s triumph in Connecticut, each of his last five victories had been preceded by at least one top-five placement in the previous four tournaments he’d played.

But when it comes to the British, the preludes have been more pedestrian than profound.

His 2014 flameout came after a three-event stretch of a missed cut, a tie for 31st and a tie for 16th, while a tie for 30th at the Greenbrier Classic immediately preceded his tie for 32nd at the 2013 Open.

Even his best European vacation—which yielded a tie for 23rd at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in 2012—was the product of two missed cuts in three preparatory events.

This year, Watson’s pre-trip strategy has him erring on the side of productive inactivity.

The win at the Travelers came in just his 10th PGA event of the season, and though the $3,990,174 he’s pocketed ranks him fifth, the number of events he’s played is the third fewest among the top 30 earners.

Rather than grinding every week to get ready for the big-stage tournaments, he’s sought out the best way to juggle life with a wife and two children—in addition to pursuing perfection on the course. He’ll play the Greenbrier next week in West Virginia, take a week off and head to St. Andrews, where he shot 74-73 and missed the cut when the course last hosted the Open in 2010.

“We all know theories are just theories,” Watson told the Associated Press (via the Delaware News Journal). “But when you look at it on paper, I'm trying to figure out my life. I'm looking at it going, ‘How do I get my best energy level? How do I get the most positive thoughts?’ It doesn't mean I'm going to play well.”

He’s right. Maybe it doesn’t.

But more so than on any recent trip, he’ll at least be arriving in style.