Lefty Watson Wins Masters

American Bubba Watson is the Masters champion after winning a play-off against Louis Oosthuizen at the second extra hole.

Watson started the day three shots off the lead and shot a closing 68 to earn a play-off against the 2010 Open champion.

Both men missed birdie putts on the 18th green at the first play-off hole, but a par at the 10th was good enough to earn the left-hander a Green Jacket.

Watson had seemed out of contention before making four straight birdies from the 13th to draw level with Oosthuizen.

The South African had led since the second hole when he became just the fourth man in Masters history to make an albatross, his two at the par five catapaulting him to the top of the leaderboard.

He stayed there throughout the afternoon but his failure to get up and down from the front of the green at the second play-off hole ultimately cost him a second major title.

Overnight leader Peter Hanson started with three fives and never really recovered.

Three-time winner Phil Mickelson opened his challenge steadily with three pars but his hopes were almost fatally derailed by a six at the short fourth - his second triple bogey of the week.

Nobody has ever won a Green Jacket with one triple bogey on his card and Mickelson could not change that, although he battled bravely to shoot a level par 72 and finish in four-way tie for third alongside Hanson, Lee Westwood and Matt Kuchar.

Westwood birdied the last for a 68 and would have won comfortably had he found any form at all with the putter.

It was the Englishman's sixth top three finish in his last 10 majors, but still he has not won one in 56 attempts.

Mickelson had crashed from one behind to four back on the third after hitting the grandstand on the left with his tee shot and rebounding into the undergrowth.

Rejecting the idea of going back to the tee, he then had two right-handed hacks and found a bunker.

Getting up and down from there at least limited the damage to three dropped shots, but after seven holes Mickelson was still searching for his first birdie of the day.

Oosthuizen had bogeyed the same hole and parred his way to the turn, but then failed to get up and down from a greenside bunker at the 10th and the challengers were gathering behind him.

He birdied the long 13th, and was joined on nine under when Kuchar eagled the 15th from only three feet.

Kuchar followed that with a bogey, though, and instead, even with Oosthuizen adding another birdie at the 15th, it was his playing partner Watson who became joint leader after four successive birdies.

Both men made par at the final two holes then after Oosthuizen missed from 15 feet when they played 18 again, Watson failed to convert from eight feet.

Oosthuizen looked to have the advantage on the next when his tee shot was marginally less wayward than Watson's.

But left with 240 yards to the green he came up 10 yards short and somehow Watson managed to carve a wedge 50 yards left-to-right through the trees to 12 feet.

Perhaps unnerved by that, Oosthuizen's chip was clumsy and he did not lose his turn, with his par putt from the back fringe just shaving the right edge of the hole.

Watson had two putts for the title and he took them to complete another memorable Masters Sunday.