Another year with Boo? That's the way the cookies crumble
HILTON HEAD
ISLAND
To truly appreciate the popularity of Boo
Weekley’s repeat performance as champion of the Verizon Heritage, you had to be
standing at the 18th green as the self-styled “redneck” from
panhandle Florida (East Milton) made his way to the final green late Sunday.
Weekley dumped his approach into the front
bunker – a mere aggravation at that point, what with Boo holding a four-shot
lead on playing partner Anthony Kim and already-done Aaron Baddeley, the 2006
champion – but the chants of “Boo! Boo!” rained down on him anyway. He blasted
his shot 10 feet past the flag, then settled over the par-saving putt.
The buzz from the grandstand softened to a
mild hum, and as he took what seemed forever to make his stroke (and miss), you
almost figured he was milking the moment for all it was worth.
Finally, he tapped in for bogey and “only” a three-shot win over Kim and Baddeley, and the roars resumed. And Boo – though he insisted it was unrehearsed – performed a Broadway-worthy bow, arms extended to drink in the adulation.
Later, decked out in his tartan blazer –
the one he was presented on Monday as defending champion, the one his mother,
Patsy, made sure to bring from the trunk of her car – Boo cracked up reporters
and tournament officials with the sort of homespun humor and genuine humility
that have endeared him to Heritage fans.
He spoke of how a year ago, “I didn’t get
to stand there and turn to the crowd and do the fist pump” after chipping in
for the second straight hole to hold off Ernie Els. He hadn’t rehearsed his
bow, he insisted, but “I wanted to do the moonwalk, the belly-roll. (But) I
didn’t rehearse nothing.”
Of course not. That wouldn’t be Boo being
true to Boo.
He also insisted that he knew he couldn’t
blow his second Heritage title “when I picked that ball out of the hole on the
last one.” And he said he was so nervous, despite a lead that never shrank
below four shots on the back nine, that “I think I went through four (golf)
gloves today, I was sweating so bad.
“Seriously,” he added. Of course. Weekley was never so nervous, though, that he didn't feel right at home on the tight fairways of Harbour Town, hitting his patented controlled irons into the tiny greens and rolling putts on the familiar Bermuda greens. He said the course reminds him of his home course, Tanglewood, in Milton, except "we don't have the pretty Spanish oaks like they have here; we've got a bunch of lightning rods hanging around in the pine trees."
But what really made Harbour Town feel familiar, he said, is "the actual people, man, that surround this tournament. That actually makes this whole tournament." Somewhere nearby, you suspect, sponsors were whipping out their checkbooks.
Then Weekley told a story that managed
to embarrass (slightly) tournament director Steve Wilmot (an unabashed Boo fan,
for his cooperation in showing up for events all year long) while even further
honing Boo's “good ol’ boy” image.
The subject was the tartan blazer, a gaudy
piece of haberdashery that goes to the champion each year. As at Augusta,
when the winner puts on the jacket at tournament’s end, it usually is a
“loaner”; the tailor-made jacket that the champion gets to keep comes later.
For each title, the winner gets another
blazer. You wouldn’t wear it outside the Harbour Town grounds, but Boo was
ready to add to the closet collection.
“I hope I get another one,” he said. “Wear
one on Saturday and one on Sunday.”
A year ago, Boo slipped on Wilmot’s
blazer. “It fits about the same,” he said, “but this time I didn’t have fortune
cookies in it.”
Say what?
“Last year, Mr. Wilmot had cookies down
there (in the pockets,” Boo said as his audience chuckled, then laughed out
loud. “He ate at a Chinese place, I think. He got some cookies stuck in there.”
Know this: Wilmot will be hearing about
that for years. As long as the embarrassment comes with another year of Boo
Weekley as the countrified face of the Heritage, chances are he won’t mind a
bit.
BOB
GILLESPIE
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