How is Bubba Watson allowed to use a pink (and green) golf ball at the Masters?

The Masters. It's a tournament unlike any other — so austere and traditional that it forbids anyone to wear a backward hat, forces caddies to wear white jumpsuits that make them look like backup dancers in a Puff Daddy video, compels its TV partners to refer to fans as "patrons," sand traps as "bunkers" and rough as "second cut" and sells concessions at 1980s prices, among dozens of other like quirks that make Augusta National the most unique place in golf.

And then you flip on the TV and in all the controlled, manufactured serenity of the most beautiful golf course in the world there he is — two-time Masters winner Bubba Watson, playing a golf ball that's pink pink. Bright pink. Victoria's Secret pink. It's jolting in a world filled with green and white.

Off the tee, on the fairway, nestled in the pine straw, into the green, dropping in the cup — the ball constantly seems out of place. It's never more jolting than when Bubba putts his pink ball on the luscious, curvaceous greens of Augusta, providing a visual that's more apt for the miniature golf course rather than greatest tournament in the world.

When you see Bubba on the back nine at Augusta, your first thought is, "Oh, wow, he's playing with a pink ball!" It's an obvious sentiment given that you almost never see non-white balls at any level of the sport (maybe a few neon yellow balls during your weekend round, and the occasional pink lady, which have been marketed toward women because they're designed for slower swing speeds). But on the PGA? It's been decades since I saw anything but a white ball, maybe since Hale Irwin used an orange ball in the '70s and '80s.

But before you wrap your ahead around that, a more immediate question coms to mind: If the Masters has a litany of rules and forbids anything it doesn't like, then why is anybody allowed to use a pink ball? This almost feels rebellious, like Andre Agassi showing up to Centre Court at Wimbledon with his jorts and neon Nike shirts. Surely the Masters has a rule about this.

Nope. The Masters runs by USGA rules, and USGA rules only state that a player must use a conforming ball as approved by the organization. Of the approximately 1,200 conforming balls, about 70 are pink. That makes pink the second-most popular color, behind yellow and just about tied with orange. There are also blue, red, silver, gold, green and purple golf balls, all of which are theoretically legal at the Masters. (As is Bubba's pink glove, which he's also using this week.) One thing that's not legal — at the Masters are anywhere else playing under USGA rules — is that a player may not change ball color during the round. You could play four different colors during the tournament as long as they all were used in the four distinct rounds.

Augusta could make its own rule, of course. The caddies-in-jumpsuits thing is unique to the place. And with Wimbledon's "almost entirely in white" dress code having been on the books for decades, there's precedence in sports. Thankfully, and in breaking with its own stodginess, the Masters seemingly has no interest in doing so.

So why pink for Bubba? He first came to notice for wearing flashes of pink to raise money and awareness to various charities. When he first won the Masters in 2012, Watson used a sweet-looking pink PING driver he used en route to victory. (A limited sales run sold out immediately.) Every drive of over 300 yards (normal in Bubba-land) brought Bubba's charity a donation of $300 by PING.

The reason for this ball's usage, however, has a slightly more capitalistic bent. Bubba recently signed on with Volvik, the South Korean ball manufacturer. Volvik happens to make a slew of colored golf balls, which is something Bubba noticed before he signed with the company (or at least that's the narrative created after he did):

''They used a pink one and they used an orange one. I was watching this, and I'd never looked at the company. So I Googled the website, I looked at it, and read about. It's a small company. You can't just come out here and just start boasting and spending advertising dollars and things, because you'll hurt your company real fast. ... They're doing things differently, and that's how I noticed them.''

Bubba's pink ball debuted at the start of the 2017 season and might soon be joined by a green ball (Bubba insists it's not that shade of green — it's more lime green) as well as a boring ol' white one. The two-time Masters champion thinks adding in some golf-ball flair could be good for the sport. I'm all for it.

Ever since Tiger Woods' dominant win in 1997 led to the so-called Tiger-proofing of Augusta, some have wondered whether the Masters would ever create its own conforming golf ball and make players use it at the tournament. It'd be in response to the technology that sees new balls jump off the club face, like a 10-cent bouncy ball you used to get in grocery store vending machines. The guys in green don't think that'll happen.

Said Augusta chairman Billy Payne, when asked about the issue during this year's media address:

"I think the greatest development since (that talk surfaced) is that the governing bodies, the USGA and the R&A, now have a more concentrated, concerned effort about that issue, as they do with the other rules. They are working together to ensure that it does not become a problem, and as is always the case, we have great confidence in their ability to forge a solution.

"But of course, as you would imagine, we always reserve the right to do whatever we have to do to preserve the integrity of our golf course. But I don't think that (a Masters golf ball) will ever happen.''