Last week, before the 2014 Masters began, one of my friends, a former professional golfer, wondered whether the game would be compelling to watch in five or ten years, when Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are no longer perennial threats at the majors. “I guess we’ll get all we want of Jordan Spieth,” he said dispiritedly, referring to the twenty-year-old phenom who is ninth in the World Golf Rankings. Nothing against the youngster or his game, my friend explained; it was just that Spieth, who was three years old when Woods won his first Masters, is a product of golf’s Tiger revolution, exhibiting the same flawless swing, the same athletic fitness, the same mercenary demeanor on the course—but a copy, in the former pro’s estimation, without the gloss of the original.

This weekend at Augusta National, my friend got a taste of the future of golf that worries him. Tiger withdrew before the tournament started, to recuperate from another surgery. Phil, not quite a year removed from his masterful win at the Open Championship, looked sluggish and missed the cut. Adam Scott, the defending champion, was a nonfactor by Sunday. And Jordan Spieth became the youngest player ever to make the final twosome at the Masters, with a chance to be its youngest champion. (Tiger, the current record holder, was twenty-one when he won his first, in 1997.) CBS made sure you didn’t forget it: history was happening, viewer.

But Spieth botched the last few holes on his front nine, and by the turn found himself trailing Bubba Watson, the 2012 champion. After hitting it in the creek on the short par-three twelfth, Spieth made an admirable bogey to keep himself within reach, but, at the thirteenth tee, a patron-free narrow of Augusta greenage framed by Bob Ross levels of blooming flower, Watson pounded a three-hundred-and-sixty-six-yard drive, made birdie, and solidified the lead that he maintained for the remainder of the inward nine.

With the win, his second green jacket in three years, Watson joins Mickelson as the only left-handed golfers to win multiple majors. There isn’t much to parse from this bit of trivia, but it does underline the theme of Bubba’s career: an opposition to standard.

This was never more apparent than on Sunday, when Watson, with his homebrew swing that’s generously referred to as “unorthodox,” played alongside the younger, sleeker, technically proficient Spieth. Spieth’s swing is a newly paved freeway through the heartland: smooth, straight, efficient, dependable. Watson’s is the spotty two-lane through the backwater. It’s tangled and indirect, a mess of rough road that seems to surprise Watson as much as anybody when it leads to the desired location. Watson is the longest hitter on tour, and when he puts his full weight into the driver, as he did on the thirteenth on Sunday, his follow-through is all recoil. After contact, Watson’s hands jerk and twitch, his feet dance away from the target, his eyes plead for the ball to do right.

Spieth plays with an effortlessness that is no doubt the result of great effort. He’s the Federer of golf right now: fluid motions, no sweat glands, an air of calm superiority. He lost the green jacket to Watson on Sunday, tying for second place with Jonas Blixt, but did so with a grace that belied his years. “That was fun, but at the same time it hurts right now,” Spieth said in his post-round interviews on Sunday, adding that he would learn from the experience and move forward with his game—evidence that Spieth is perhaps as precocious with cliché as he is with sport. More, he managed a few smiles—an improvement, to be sure, on the Tiger blueprint.

Above: Jordan Spieth, at the Masters. Photograph by David Cannon/Getty.