Phelps Gives a Tip of the Golf Cap to Watson OMAHA - Through the magic of Twitter's direct messaging, Michael Phelps has traded cellphone numbers with the golfer Bubba Watson. If he could, he'd happily trade sports. Phelps, who took up golf after his record eight-gold-medal performance at the 2008 Olympics, said: "I love watching him. I try to hit the ball really far, but he just crushes it. Phelps said he was riveted to the television during the final round of the Masters. Watson forced a playoff with his final-round partner, Louis Oosthuizen, then won on the second hole of sudden death with the help of a preposterous hook shot out of the woods. Wielding his smartphone like a microphone, Phelps turned into Twitter-verse's answer to the golf announcer Jim Nantz. He said he tweeted throughout the playoff. "He was so attuned," Phelps said of Watson. He was so focused. You could see it in his eyes he wasn't going to lose that playoff. I was tweeting how amazing it was to see the motivation in his eyes and see how focused he was. Even on the final putt, which was just a tap-in, he made sure he took everything seriously and completed what he set out to do. There was one fairway where he was walking and he was so determined, he was staring like it was only him out there. Hmmm, sounds like someone else who became an American folk hero with his star turn on sport's big stage. Was Phelps aware that he described Watson the way people in Beijing routinely described him? Phelps, who turns 27 on Saturday, laughed and fell silent. "I guess I've never thought about it," he said. But now that you've said it it's kind of cool to see and hear people tell stories of where they watched the races.