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Notebook: Boo Who?

Q School Surprise

By Gary Van Sickle

The self-taught Weekley would prefer to play in rainpants and sneakers than slacks and spikes.  David Walberg GOLF PLUS EXTRA My Shot: Bob Gilder This Old Course Ain't She a Beaut! Van's Top 10 New Public Courses TRUST ME This season Tiger Woods slammed, Annika Sorenstam shot 59, and everyone hit 300-yard drives, but 2001 will be best remembered as the year the bubble burst. The Sept. 11 attacks and a recession stopped the expansion of pro golf, and no amount of spin can turn the recently announced contractions of the LPGA and Senior tours into positive signs. UP DOWN 2002 2001 Boo Weekley Roland Thatcher Sergio García Jim Furyk 84 78 Stupefaction Validation THREESOMES Q. What do these players have in common? 1. Tommy Armour III 2. Russ Cochran 3. Blaine McCallister A. Of the 15 players at last week's Q school final who had won a Tour event, they were the only ones to earn a card for 2002. NEXT UP PGA: Hyundai Team Matches Senior: Hyundai Team Matches European: Hyundai Team Matches INSTANT POLL Will you play a hot driver knowing that it will later be deemed nonconforming? Yes No View Results

Six hundred miles from home, the country boy pulled into the parking lot at Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., and marveled that he'd completed the journey. "Wow, I made it," Thomas (Boo) Weekley said with a smile. "I'm here. I'm finally here."

Weekley, a 28-year-old career mini-tour player from Milton, Fla. (pop. 8,000), was too naive to know that you're not supposed to sound excited when you show up for the six-round death march that is the Q school final. Only the top 35 (as well as anyone who tied for 35th) out of last week's 167-player field would earn PGA Tour cards for 2002, and the pressure was so unsettling that at one point teen phenom Ty Tryon was guzzling Maalox.

In this overheated environment the happy-go-lucky Weekley was the event's most unlikely success story. A PG-rated version of John Daly, only frumpier, Weekley rubs his gut while standing on the tee box for good luck and, owing to his ever-present pinch of chewing tobacco, spews spittle on the course. Because of his extra-wide feet, Weekley eschews golf shoes in favor of chunky sneakers, and an itchy skin condition on his right leg compels him to wear baggy rainpants instead of trousers.

For all of his idiosyncrasies, Weekley blended in nicely with an opening-round 66 that tied for the lead. "I ain't nervous," he said. "I ain't never been here, so I don't know what to feel." Oblivious of the Tour code that a player must bang balls until the sun sets, Weekley rushed straight to T.G.I. Friday's after signing his scorecard each day, and by the time everyone else was leaving the course, he was at the Comfort Inn playing solitaire on his laptop.

Weekley took up golf when he was 15 after injuring his left rotator cuff while pitching for Milton High. Ambidextrous and self-taught, he began playing golf as a left-hander, but after shanking a ball off his high school coach, he went righty. Weekley studied turfgrass management for 1 1/2 years at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Ga., but left because, he says, "I ain't liking school much." He took odd jobs picking cotton and soybeans on his grandfather's 1,000-acre farm in Milton and spent three years earning $8.50 an hour as a hydro blaster for a chemical plant.

While his childhood friend Heath Slocum was preparing for a pro career, Weekley spent his spare time turkey or deer hunting after work and sleeping in the back of his truck. "All of us thought he had enough talent to play on Tour," says Jerry Driggers, Weekley's golfing buddy back home at Tanglewood Country Club. "It was hard to convince him. He thought he wasn't worldly enough. He's never been to New York or Chicago. He feared big towns and thought good players came only from them."

Weekley played the mini-tours for the past four years, winning 26 times and building the confidence to return to Q school after two failed tries. During Monday's final round Weekley chipped in twice to key a clutch 69, which pushed him to 18 under and a tie for 23rd. When the final putt dropped, he hugged his caddie, Jack Slocum (Heath's father), high-fived his manager and began an hourlong whirlwind of being pursued by glad-handing reporters, job-seeking caddies and equipment representatives. "This is unreal," a giddy Weekley said. "I could use a beer."

Alone at last, Weekley called his wife, Karyn, who had monitored the tournament in Milton at the family-owned Weekley Pharmacy. "I didn't know whether to cry or scream or set the course on fire," he said into the phone. "Can you imagine? They all think I'm some good ol' country boy. Next year I'm going to show up as the big-time city boy."

—Yi-Wyn Yen

Sexagenarian Collegian
Finally Having a Senior Moment

When Judy Eller Street arrived at the Doral Resort for her first college tournament in 40 years carrying her own clubs, she inspired a passerby to wish her team good luck. "He thought I was the coach," she says with a laugh. At 61 Eller Street is a senior golfer -- and a senior on the women's team at Barry University, a Division II Catholic school in Miami Shores, Fla.

The name Judy Eller may be familiar. She won the U.S. Junior in 1957 and '58 and was on the team for three years at Miami, for which she was the NCAA champion in '59. A year later Eller Street joined future LPGA Hall of Famer JoAnne Carner and future USGA president Judy Bell on the American team that won the Curtis Cup.

Eller married Gordon Street Jr. in 1961, and she played amateur golf until age 29, when she quit to raise children (three daughters and a son). Her return to golf, like her return to college, was accidental. Last year she attended Barry's athletic awards banquet, at which a friend introduced her to Buccaneers golf coach Roger White and jokingly said that Eller Street still had some eligibility. "It started from there," says White. Barry officials discovered that Eller Street had four semesters of eligibility remaining for Division II play. Once she decided to join the Buccaneers, Eller Street hired a personal trainer and went to see her old pal Carner for help with her swing. "Judy has always had talent," Carner says. "I knew if she dedicated herself, she could do this. I just told her to dye her hair."

Eller Street has shown signs of youth. In her second tournament, the Grenelefe Invitational in Haines City, Fla. in October, she shot 88-89 in the first two rounds but rebounded by closing with a 75 -- the low round of the day -- and finished 11th. "That was the first time I felt, Gee, I can compete," Eller Street says. "It was like being young again." In eight tournament rounds this fall she has an 84.6 stroke average.

Two quarters shy of a liberal studies degree, Eller Street is adjusting to being a student-athlete. Recently, on the first day of the Pat Bradley Invitational in Miami, she carried her bag for 36 holes, then drove 25 miles back to the Barry campus to take a literature exam. Early the next morning she was back on the course for the tournament's final 18 holes. "She was right there with all the kids," says White. "She's an inspiration."

Issue date: December 10, 2001

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