Bubba Watson's Wonderful Hovercraft Golf Cart

There are perks to being a golfer on the PGA Tour, especially when you’re the defending Masters champion like Bubba Watson. For one thing, you have a built-in audience upon which you can inflict awful rap.

But there are positives, particularly if you’re a fan of rare and unusual vehicles like Watson, who can afford to own the original “General Lee” car from the classic “Dukes of Hazzard” TV series. Watson appears to have outdone himself this time with a hovercraft golf cart.

The BW1 by Oakley is a modification of an existing model which is available to the public. It seems perfect for a golf course: along with being able to cruise over water hazards and sand traps, it leaves no tire tracks or spike marks on the course.

At this point, it’s highly doubtful we’ll see this thing whooshing its way around the golf course at Augusta National. For one thing, the BW1 is noisy: it uses air currents and rotating blades to carry the mechanism, hold it aloft and move it. For another, it has to be prohibitively expensive — so expensive that no dollar figure was published in any story about it.

It’s not the first time this year that this type of technology has been used on a golf course. The Arnold Palmer Invitational saw the debut of a camera called the “Hoverfly Erista” whose noise has been likened to a “swarm of angry bees.” A prototype was tested at Bay Hill for use not at the tournament, where it would be too much of a distraction during live play, but for the Golf TV show “On the Range.”

However, you’re not reading this to ooh and ahh over a flying camera: you’re here to lust and drool over a vehicle you’ll never likely own or even be able to take onto a proper golf course. You’re also here to be jealous of Bubba and the fact that a guy who taught himself to play golf now has a Green Jacket emblematic of a Masters champion, lives in Tiger Woods’ old house, and can afford to have a hovercraft golf cart — well, it’s not clear whether he actually owns the thing: Oakley is a sponsor of Watson’s and they developed it, but he probably gets to ride around in it as much as he wants.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. “You’ve got to stay 30 yards from the green, you’ve got to stay on the cart path when it’s raining,” Watson said in an interview. “But let’s have fun. Let’s go through the water hazard, come off the other side by the green, putt your ball in the hole, and then you can drive back across the water hazard. Who doesn’t want to do that?”

In case you’ve ever wondered whether you’re in the wrong business, this should pretty much confirm it — unless, of course, you’re also a millionaire Masters champ who has access to a hovercraft golf cart.