He's a son of the Florida panhandle (as every serious golfhead knows) but he's drawn to the Greenbrier, the grand hotel in a rugged nook of West Virginia, like a camper to a bonfire.

Debris is stacked up along the back of the golf academy as workers begin the cleanup of the Old White Course on the property of the Greenbrier Resort.

In the meantime, the vultures were circling, looking for easy pickings on the course, laid out on the soggy fairways like bacon strips in those metal bins at the Marriott breakfast buffets.

He is also a high school basketball coach, a former West Virginia junior-golf champion and, Bubba Watson will tell you "a big teddy bear with an enormous heart."

Among the players in the the field this year are Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson (with his brother Tim caddying for him), Patrick Reed, Jimmy Walker and Si Woo Kim.