Bubba Watson Gets Candid About the 'Panic' He Felt After Winning His First Masters

Bubba Watson opens up to PEOPLE about the "embarrassment" he felt after winning his first green jacket back in 2012

Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty

With a little imagination, anything is possible — even one day winning the Masters Tournament.

“Instead of playing with G.I. Joe men and making up an army fight in my head. I was making up a golf course in my head and playing golf,” Bubba Watson tells PEOPLE while opening up about his family’s starring role in a new Jockey campaign. “It was just a different way of using your imagination. That’s how I fell in love with [golf] as a kid.”

The two-time Masters Champion — who holds one of the longest drives in golf — has humble beginnings, picking up a golf club when he was just six years old and teaching himself the game, with no official lessons.

And he’s even more humble when it comes to his accomplishments since then, opening up to Barstool Sports earlier this year about the “embarrassment” he felt after winning his first green jacket back in 2012.

As Watson previously revealed earlier this year to Barstool Sports.

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“I was like ‘Why me?’ If I look back at how I grew up without instruction without all these things that people have nowadays,” Watson explains to PEOPLE. “Why am I winning this? Am I good enough?”

For Watson, as with other professional golfers, the honor of winning the Masters green jacket holds weight and pride — but emotions were running high during his first victory.

His father had recently died, just as he became a dad for the first time himself. Watson and his wife, Angie Watson, had welcomed their first child via adoption, son Caleb, just two weeks before the tournament.

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Winning the title was validation for his hard work and training, but it also made Watson feel the pressure of making sure to use the platform it gave him in the right way, he says.

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“The first [Masters win] it just was more of a panic, like ‘Oh my gosh, I have the green jacket. Why do I have it,’ ” Watson recalls to PEOPLE. “With the second time [in 2014] … You know I’ve got a second chance on trying to use the jacket the right way and what platform I could help with that, it calmed my mind a little bit.”

Now, Watson is taking on a different kind of role: underwear model for Jockey International, Inc.

“Who doesn’t want to be an underwear model,” Watson laughs. He and Angie, along with their two children — son Caleb, 6, and daughter Dakota, 4 — are the new faces of Jockey’s “Show ‘Em What’s Underneath, Show ‘Em Your Jockey” campaign.

As Watson prepares to defend his title at the Genesis Open this upcoming weekend, he reflects on the tournament, his wins and how his family has grown with each one.

“Having Caleb there for my first win and then having Dakota there for the other,” He says. “It’s been a cool to see the pictures from when I had him there and won it, to when I had the whole family there and won. It was quite amazing to see these pictures that we have on the walls.”

“I look forward to the challenge of that place,” he adds.