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MERCEDES-BENZ CHAMPIONSHIP 2008December 31, 2007Boo WeekleyKAPALUA, HAWAII STEWART MOORE: Boo Weekley, welcome to Maui, first and foremost. Thanks for spending some time with us here today. I know you and I were on the same flight coming out here from Los Angeles but you had spent quite some time in southern California trying to get out here. Talk to us about that. BOO WEEKLEY: Actually it started in Pensacola when we got ready to leave Friday morning. We got there and everything -- we checked all the luggage and everything was good, and my little tote bag had to go through the screen. I had it in my bag and I used it for hunting and I left two bullets in it. That kind of was like right out of the gate started the whole week for me. They put the red flags on me. I had the cops there. I thought I was going to jail (laughter). We got out of that, and then we sat there for two hours and waited and got on our plane going to Atlanta and we got to Atlanta and we was about five, ten minutes late getting into Atlanta and we missed our flight going to Atlanta so we spent the night there. Then we got up on Saturday morning, actually about 4:00 o'clock, and caught a flight at 6:00 and flew all the way into Los Angeles and we sat in Los Angeles for about nine hours in the terminal there waiting to get over here. Then finally got on that bird and came on over. STEWART MOORE: Did you have to entertain your son that whole time? BOO WEEKLEY: It was tough. It was tough to keep myself patient. I think I sat in every chair in the thing in there, in the airport. Q. The bullets were from your carry-on bag, the bag you carry on? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, it was my carry-on bag. It was sitting in my floorboard, and I used it for hunting, it was a little bit bigger bag and I could put more stuff in it. We went to Illinois dear hunting when we went over to China, and that's when I used it. I reckon I just left two bullets way down in the bottom of it. I couldn't find them, and they found them on that screen. Q. Just for the record, what kind of bullets were they? BOO WEEKLEY: They were .308s. Q. How did you talk your way out of that one? BOO WEEKLEY: I didn't. I just begged and pleaded. I just sat there and shook my head like I was an idiot, you know? Really, I was like, they're going to do their normal search, pull all my stuff out. They didn't say nothing. The security guys come up, the actual police guys, the dog and stuff, and he's sniffing around at my heels and stuff. What's going on here? They said, "We're going to rerun this one again." I said, "There ain't nothing in there." He said, "Yeah, there is." I said, "What's in there? I'll tell you where it's at." He said, "There's some bullets." I said, "What?" There was. There was two of them. Q. Where did they take you from there? BOO WEEKLEY: They confiscated the bullets and then broke down a bunch of stuff, got in everything about me and then put a flag by me. They said they were going to red flag me to get ready for what's going to happen for every time you fly now. I can understand, they're doing their job. I'd want the same thing -- I understand it's an accident, and accidents do happen like this one, for sure. But it's kind of comical because no matter where you fly anyway we get red flagged half the time anyway, especially when we get one-way flights. Q. So had those bullets been to China? BOO WEEKLEY: No. I probably wouldn't have left. If I would have found them over there I wouldn't have left (laughter). There ain't no way. Q. You have not been here before, have you? BOO WEEKLEY: I ain't never been over here on this island. I've been where we played the Sony at. Q. Sony twice, right? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah. Q. Any impressions of it? BOO WEEKLEY: I haven't even caught up on my sleep yet. I've been in a daze. Q. You were here all day yesterday? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, I was here all day. Q. Big blur? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, trying to figure out where we're heading and what we're doing. I've got my wife and my little boy and my mother-in-law. My pa-in-law and my mom came in last night and they ain't got their luggage. My cousin is here. It's just been a mess. Q. Where are you staying, in the hotel or the villas? BOO WEEKLEY: In the villas, Bay Villas. Q. Good view? BOO WEEKLEY: It's a pretty view. I live on the water down where I live. It's just a different name for it. It's called the Pacific here instead of the gulf. Q. How much golf, if any, have you played since the World Cup? BOO WEEKLEY: I played one time in the front yard. Me and my little boy, me and him go out -- it wasn't even my clubs. I'll tell you what, I only hit my clubs one time to pull an iron out of it to look at it and see if it was the one I was going to switch out before I came over here, and then I said I'd just leave it like it is, zipped it right back up. I ain't even took it out of the gun case -- or my bag -- I've still got bullets in my head. It's still hunting season back home. I was thinking hunting (laughter). Q. Do you have a little makeshift hole in your front yard? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, it's about 40 yards, 50 yards. I've got a piece of wood sitting out there with a white sock on it. STEWART MOORE: I believe you told one of the PGA TOUR guys that you have a better chance of shooting 82 this week than 62. BOO WEEKLEY: Yes, sir. Yeah, you can go with that. I ain't played no golf. Ain't no telling where it's heading. Q. You played good in China, though, I heard. BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, we played good in China. We fed off each other, me and Heath. That was a plus. That was a great time over there. I mean, it was great to be able to go over and represent your country. We didn't know -- I knew how he was going to play but I didn't know how I was going to play. I knew he was going to play good because he's been playing and practicing and I had been up in a woods hunting. Q. Up in a tree killing something is what Monty said, your new best friend? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, I heard he kind of liked me. Q. He did. He wants to be like you. BOO WEEKLEY: (Laughing) he better come on home with me, then (laughter). We've got a lot of changing to do (laughter). Q. What did you have for Thanksgiving dinner over there, do you remember? BOO WEEKLEY: I think sushi or something. I think it was sushi. I think that's what we had. Q. An untraditional one for you then? BOO WEEKLEY: We eat sushi where we live at, but it wasn't your normal turkey and everything. Q. Have you thought much about this year, what you want to accomplish? BOO WEEKLEY: Not yet because I ain't even in the golfing mood yet, I'm still into hunting. That's where I'm at right now in my mind. I'm pretty sure once I tee it up the first day here, then I'll start setting some goals. I've got some goals. I want to win one more time than I did last year and I want to finish, instead of in the Top 30 I want to finish in the top 20 this year. I want to be more competitive. Each of my goals I want to get better at, like my chipping, my putting, my greens in percentage. I want to get better at that. But I've still got a long ways to go. Q. Where do you put the bullets up, so to speak? BOO WEEKLEY: We get done after five weeks, when we leave Arizona I've got two weeks left of hunting season back home. Q. So you still live in the panhandle then? BOO WEEKLEY: I do. Q. What do you hunt for those two weeks? What's the season, so to speak? BOO WEEKLEY: Deer, hogs, whatever comes out. Q. What was the hunting highlight post-World Cup, any good stuff between now and then? BOO WEEKLEY: We went to Texas. I got to take my daddy out there to a nice ranch out there and Mossy Oak put it on for us. He got to shoot a deer. And they filmed me, my daddy and my uncle Jim shooting deer, and it's going to be on Mossy Oak Outdoors, on The Golf Channel I think next year or something like that or this coming here. That ought to be pretty good. Q. Did you bag anything? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, I killed an eight-point. I killed an eight, my daddy killed a ten and my uncle killed a 12. Q. Who put this on? BOO WEEKLEY: Mossy Oak. It's a hunting company out of West Point, Mississippi. It was on my chest last year, now it's on my collar right there. Q. What do you have now? BOO WEEKLEY: Back Office. Q. What's that? BOO WEEKLEY: It was just called Back Office Associates. Q. What do they do? You'd better study up (laughter). BOO WEEKLEY: Don't print that. I will be cut off the loop. Q. They're not a bullet-maker, I take it? BOO WEEKLEY: No. Q. Anything else? Club-wise it sounds like pretty much everything is just like you left it? BOO WEEKLEY: No. Q. No ball change or anything? BOO WEEKLEY: No, still like the 05 ball, Titleist. Ain't nothing changed. Q. Any other endorsements besides Back Office? BOO WEEKLEY: This new shirt company, Firethorn. Fidra was with Cleveland, and whatever happened there, I don't know. Q. Does Cleveland ask its guys to try anything with the Srixon ball? BOO WEEKLEY: No, that's just going to be a later date, I think, whenever they decide what they're going to do, I don't know. Q. People always talk about your ball-striking being such a strength of your game. What do you see as your weakness? BOO WEEKLEY: My chipping, putting. Q. Chipping, having chipped in twice now to win? BOO WEEKLEY: Every dog finds a bone, seriously. Bumper play and chipping and putting is by far the weakest part of my game. I've just got to get a little better at it. Your body can't be hurting as bad as mine has been hurting this past year. Ever since we left for China, before I left to go to China I had a shot of cortisone in my left shoulder, a shot of cortisone in my elbow, and I had one in my hand and I've had a B-12 shot, a Decadron shot. Q. When did you have the shots? Before China? BOO WEEKLEY: No, I had them after. I kind of hurt myself before I left to go to China, before I went to go hunting. I was in my barn and I was building a big wooden shelf, standing up about 12-foot tall. As I was standing it up I thought I had it tacked into the wall pretty good and I was up on my ladder and I was sliding my ladder, walking my ladder over and when I pulled off of it, it fell, and it fell with me, and I tried to catch myself and it pinned me down and we both landed on the concrete on my left shoulder there. I thought I tore my rotator cuff and messed up some other stuff, but I ended up just having bursitis, tendonitis and stuff like that and just got inflammation in it real bad. Q. How far did you fall? BOO WEEKLEY: About 10, 12-foot, like cutting a tree down, "timber." Q. So you had a shot in the shoulder, one in the elbow -- BOO WEEKLEY: And two in the wrist and one in the heinie. Q. What was that for? BOO WEEKLEY: I got a B-12 shot and a Decadron shot, which is kind of the same thing but a little more dosage, a little more time release, the Decadron is, kind of like the cortisone. Q. It helps you deal? BOO WEEKLEY: I guess so. I will tell you what it done, it makes me eat a lot. It will make you eat like Prednisone, or whatever that stuff is. Q. What was going through your mind when you were sitting there pinned under the ladder? BOO WEEKLEY: I got up out from under it first, shook it off a little bit and then went and got a cold one. Q. Is that an ice pack or what? BOO WEEKLEY: No, I'm talking about a cold one. Q. So have you swung a golf club very much since you did that? When I say very much, at all? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah, I swung around out in the yard. Q. But not a round of golf or on the range or nothing? BOO WEEKLEY: No. Q. So you really don't know what's going to happen? BOO WEEKLEY: Ain't got a clue. Q. How do you feel? BOO WEEKLEY: I'm feeling all right right now. I'm still on some medication for it and stuff like that. I feel fine, anti-inflammatories and stuff. Q. I don't reckon you've read your anti-doping policy yet, have you? BOO WEEKLEY: I ain't into all that. If they want to know what I got, I can give them the phone number to my doctor. I ain't crazy. You can look at me and tell. Q. You got a taste of representing your country over at the World Cup. You mentioned last year at the PGA you knew a little bit about the Ryder Cup. But is that anywhere on the map when you think about goals for this year? BOO WEEKLEY: If they want me to play in the Ryder, I'll play. I'm just going to go out and play golf and have fun and enjoy myself. If I get the opportunity, yeah, it would be great. But I ain't going to go out there and worry about if I'm going to make the Ryder Cup or if I'm going to make this or make that. I just want to go out and play golf and have fun at what I'm doing. It's not life or death out here, it's just go out and play. And if you don't make it, you don't make it. Q. The Ryder Cup is based on money this year as opposed to points as in the past, and of course the FedExCup is points. At the end of the day when you sit down and, say, after a tournament, do you look at money or points? BOO WEEKLEY: I don't look at probably neither one of them. I know what I'm doing, and this year I think you've got to make probably over $900,000 to make your card. That ain't the way I think. I think if I'm going to make my card this year, I play just like this is my last year. Just because I got an extra year, that -- Q. So you would trend toward maybe looking at cash more than the points because that would be a better indicator of where you stood? BOO WEEKLEY: Yeah. Money don't lie. Q. No, it doesn't. BOO WEEKLEY: You can go out and make all the money you can. That's all you can do. Q. When is the last time you would have played match play? BOO WEEKLEY: When is the last time I played match play? I reckon when I was in China. I don't know. Q. I mean head-to-head against one opponent. BOO WEEKLEY: Oh, I couldn't tell you. It was probably back on the mini-Tour, DT TOUR. That Tour would put all kinds of gimmicks together that we could play. Q. What's your schedule like this year? BOO WEEKLEY: I'm just going to play the first five, take two weeks off and then I don't know. Q. Through Phoenix and then skip Pebble and LA? Then you're in the Match Play this year? BOO WEEKLEY: I reckon. If I don't feel like playing I just call them a week ahead of time and say, "I ain't coming." That's the way to do it. Sign up for everything. Q. Right now you're officially entered in all 48 tournaments this year? BOO WEEKLEY: I think so. I hope so. That's what I told my agent to do. Q. And then just pull out? BOO WEEKLEY: Pull out when I'm tired. I might get hot. That's the reason why I say do it that way. You want to stay out there as long as you can. If you're hot and you play good for five, six weeks in a row, then you can take two or three weeks off or a month off or whatever you want to do. Q. When you look at the -- the thrill last year obviously was Hilton Head, and Honda I guess to a smaller degree -- BOO WEEKLEY: The thrill was Honda. I learned more about myself at the Honda than I have probably in the last -- however long I've been playing golf. I learned that I'm a better person than what I thought I was, a better player. Q. Did it take losing to figure that out? BOO WEEKLEY: Yes, sir. Q. What part of it, getting to the playoff, the way it ended on the 18th? BOO WEEKLEY: Just the 18th, three-putting the last hole and then walking off. I wouldn't say everybody would have felt the same way I felt. I mean, I felt like crying, but at the same time I felt rejoiced that, hey, I put myself in this place, it was my opportunity, and I'm the one that choked. Other people, granted, would have said, something else happened or I hurt something or the wind blew. I gave myself -- it's my fault, and I can handle this. I can handle it. No matter what pressure you put on me, I can handle it. I might not succeed but I can handle it. Q. You blame no one but yourself? BOO WEEKLEY: Ain't no one else but me, dude. Who else is out there with me? I didn't see someone standing behind me telling me to hit it. It's just me. Q. So there was more positive than being just mad? BOO WEEKLEY: Oh, yeah. I'm mad on the golf course all the time. Seriously, I get out there and I tee it up, I'm mad. I'm aggravated. The whole way around the whole golf course I'm aggravated because I'm hitting it bad. I'm putting it bad, I'm aggravated. I'm always mad at myself. As soon as I walk off the golf course, it's over with. We're done playing golf. Let's go have fun. It's just like when you clock into work, you do your eight hours, as soon as we get done with work, okay, let's go fishing, hunting. I've got more to life than golf. That's what I learned when I was there at that time. That was things that I learned, was there's more to this golf. It's just golf. Q. Do you get mad anyplace else, traffic or -- BOO WEEKLEY: Fishing, hunting. I get mad when I can see a deer or a fish over there and I can't catch him. But that's the competitive part of it, is you want to catch that one thing or shoot that one thing. Every time I tee it up, I'm out there and I want to beat everybody that's on that golf course. But at the same time I want to beat the golf course. 72 is the number, you've got to beat that number. Q. Are you going to get mad if you're short two bullets hunting? BOO WEEKLEY: No, I've got plenty of them. I brought a bunch of extras this year. I knew I was going to have a lot of time off so I figured I was going to shoot a bunch of deer. Q. How many bullets do you take with you on a hunting trip that two would be left? BOO WEEKLEY: I take them -- when I went to Texas I took 20, but I only shot like four or five bullets. But like around the house, I'll carry, on average, in the woods with me -- if I carry two guns with me, I carry my rifle on my back and my shotgun in my hand. My shotgun has five and I have two extras in my pocket and my rifle has five in it and I carry two extras, so I carry about 14 bullets around. Q. So there was just two extras -- BOO WEEKLEY: It's like golf balls. If you've got a golf course and you've got a lot of water you put extra golf balls in. Q. So when you say "red flag," are you going to have to stop an extra five or ten minutes? BOO WEEKLEY: That's the way they explained it to me. They red flag your clothes bag, I'm talking about everything. So you think instead of running your thing through the little X-ray machine they're going to pull it out, be dumping it out and checking it. Q. Do you think you'll get rid of that red flag if you win The Masters? BOO WEEKLEY: I doubt it because that ain't got nothing to do with these airlines. Q. So the green jacket won't get rid of the red flags? BOO WEEKLEY: It might. Q. Along the lines of the thrill for you last year, was there any sort of a big disappointment for you? BOO WEEKLEY: In golf there wasn't, no. Q. No close calls or something you wish you had done? BOO WEEKLEY: No, everything I done, I did it right then because that's what I wanted to do at that time, at that moment. You can't look back and regret what you did. You live in the past, you know? STEWART MOORE: Boo, thanks for coming in. Good luck in 2008. BOO WEEKLEY: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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