The boys from Milton take on the Masters
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HEATH SLOCUM
MILTON, Fla. --- Heath Slocum doesn't live in Milton anymore. He doesn't even live in Florida.
Yet from his home in the Atlanta suburbs, he doesn't feel he is really gone.
"I talk to somebody every day from there," Slocum said of his friends and family, including his father and sister, back in the Panhandle.
Slocum -- whose family moved to Milton when he was 13 and his father became the head pro at Tanglewood -- might seem like the outsider of the group. In demeanor, he is the polar opposite of Boo Weekley and Bubba Watson.
"Boo and Bubba are big personalities," Slocum said. "They're both extroverts. It's not so much they love the attention, but they'll talk to anybody or say anything. I've always been an introvert. I feel if I'm playing well, the media will say something to me."
Yet Slocum and Weekley became inseparable friends, bonding through golf, hunting and fishing.
"We're from a small, football-oriented town, and we're golfers," Slocum said. "Other than that, he's just a likeable guy. We were just kind of drawn together. We played basketball together our freshman year. We must have played a thousand games on his goal in his front yard. We had the same circle of friends. We saw each other every single day. I guess it's a good thing we like each other."
Weekley's free-wheeling approach brings out the personality in the more calculating Slocum.
"Boo was the instigator," said Tom Weekley, Boo's father. "He'd get Heath involved and Heath would go along."
Though Slocum has more successes -- with two PGA Tour wins in 2004 and 2005 and all three of his Nationwide victories in 2001 -- he concedes that Weekley and Watson are the more natural talents. They are bigger and stronger, so he taps into other areas to find success.
"To make it out here, to be successful out here, without the overpowering game and not doing anything spectacular, I feel like I get in there and am very determined and never give up," Slocum said. "That's always been my M.O. from day one. I may not have been the most talented. At a very early age, you've got to get out there with your heart, and that's what I've got."
His heart and determination were tested severely when Slocum woke up Thanksgiving Day 1997 "sick as a dog." Four months later, he was diagnosed with ulcerated colitis -- a chronic disease in which the large intestine becomes inflamed -- and it nearly ended his career before it got started.
"It's not beatable, it's not curable, but you can live your life with it," he said. "I'll have it for the rest of my life. It's not something that magically disappears. I take medication daily. I know people who went in remission for 15 or 20 years and it comes back even worse."
Slocum lost 28 pounds (down to 122) and 18 months in his pursuit of a tour career, but the three-time collegiate All-American at South Alabama regained his tour card in 2000's qualifying school and vaulted back better than before.
"I kind of rededicated myself," he said. "I looked at golf a whole different way. I looked at it as a privilege, not a right. Being an All-American in school didn't mean anything. If you want it, you've got to go work for it.
"You never appreciate your health until you lose it. It gave me a new appreciation for the way I lived and what I was thankful for. I truly believe it got me out here."
Slocum was the last of the Milton-bred golfers to qualify for the Masters. Not surprisingly, his path took consistency and patience -- and he barely slipped into the Tour Championship with the 30th and final spot that secured a trip to Augusta. He was happy to not fall short of the Masters again. "It's been a goal of mine ever since I went on tour," he said. "It's that top 40, then it was top 30. It used to be wins and then my wins didn't count. It's always been one of those things. Golly, are they trying to keep me out?"
Slocum made sure he wouldn't be an outsider.
Reach David Westin at (706) 823-3224 or david.westin@augustachronicle.com.
BOO WEEKLEY
MILTON, Fla. --- Boo is Boo.
Ask anybody who knows Boo Weekley -- friends, teachers, family, acquaintances -- and they all open with an affectionate variation of that simple statement when trying to describe the PGA Tour pro known as much for his camouflage and chewing tobacco as for his golf.
"He's a hunter, fisherman and golfer," longtime Tanglewood Golf and Country Club member Billy Lusk said. "I'm not sure what order."
"He's an outside person," said his grandmother, Abbie Jean Weekley. "He loved bugs and lizards and turtles and snakes. But he's not as country as people think he is."
Weekley is a likeable fixture in his hometown and is likely to remain a lifelong resident of Santa Rosa County in the Florida panhandle.
"He ain't never going to change," said Cal Bodenstein, a Tanglewood friend and charter fishing boat captain. "If he's got $9 million and got 14 Cadillacs, you can walk up to him and he'll probably have a hunting jacket on, chewing tobacco in his mouth and will sit down and talk to you, or me, or the lady who is going to sweep the floor, or the guys cutting the grass."
Weekley had good teachers. His father taught him that "to have a friend, you've got to be a friend." And his grandmother always said, "Be what you are; that's more important than being what you aren't."
That Boo is a golfer is remarkable. He was "discovered" by his high school shop teacher, Gene Howard, who happened to see him the first time Weekley tried to play the game at nearby Whiting Field. Howard called Weekley's father that night.
"He's got one of the purest swings that I've ever seen," Howard said. "He's just a natural, and I'd like to work with him."
At no cost, Weekley would go off with Howard in the mornings and hit balls during the day on the Monsanto company's course. While his talent was obvious -- he's ambidextrous and shoots a rifle left-handed -- his desire to play golf wasn't as high.
"Boo played golf during the season," Tanglewood pro J.J. Dunn said. "When it was hunting season, he didn't touch a club. He was in the woods. And if he was playing golf, he had a fishing pole stuck in his bag so he could wet a line at any given time."
While his best friend and Milton High teammate Heath Slocum steadily progressed toward a pro career, Weekley toiled in regular jobs such as power-washing the inside of chemical tanks.
When layoffs were hitting the Monsanto plant, Weekley saw the success Slocum was having on tour.
"In a roundabout way they pushed me back into the golf," Weekley said of Slocum and his father, Jack. "Not like they're forcing me. Just talking me back into doing what I really enjoyed doing. I really enjoy the game, but I hate it. It's a love-hate thing."
Weekley has made $3,403,102 so far in his tour career and promises he won't be chasing golf balls into his old age.
"If I can play this seriously for 10 years, you won't see me again," he said.
"If I'm happy enough with what I've accomplished, yes, I will be gone. I'd like to see my kids grow up, and that means more to me than golf."
Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.
BUBBA WATSON
MILTON, Fla. --- His given name is Gerry Lester Watson Jr., but he hasn't been called that a day in his life. At first glimpse of the 91/2-pound "big ol' slob" in the delivery room, his father saw a football player.
"I told Molly (his mother), 'We got a bubba instead of a baby,' " Gerry Watson Sr. said. "So he's been Bubba ever since day one."
Bubba Watson hasn't been living up to that name the past 29 years. He doesn't drink, smoke, hunt or fish. He prefers his golf and his video games.
Watson tends to do the opposite of what he's told and doesn't take direction well, characteristics that led to a rocky experience on the Georgia golf team and occasional dust-ups on tour.
"I don't listen to nobody," Watson said. "I'm hard-headed."
He wasn't even 10 when former Tanglewood Golf and Country Club pro Hiram Cook put a grip on his broken left-handed 9-iron and gave it to him. It led to an obsession, and Watson would rush to finish his schoolwork so he could beat plastic golf balls around his house until it was dark.
Soon after, the golf course became his daily sanctuary.
"I don't hit range balls. I just play," he said. "My parents would drop me off, and I'd play all day. If anybody wanted to play, I'd play with them."
Cook tried to give Watson lessons but realized it was pointless. His strategy was to employ reverse psychology to steer Watson in the right direction. Watson's athletic ability and competitive nature took it from there.
"I had a dream since I was 12," Watson said. "Watching the greats play pumped me up. That's all I know."
One of the greats he admired most was three-time major winner Payne Stewart.
"My dad told me that Payne Stewart's dad told him, 'If you're not going to be the best, you've got to stand out,' " Watson said. "So I wore the knickers because of him. I had to stand out somehow."
Watson's grandmother made his knickers by hand, and he remained the only kid in Bagdad, Fla., wearing them until he was 12. "I shot 62 when I was 12 -- 10 pars and eight birdies in a tournament -- and I retired them," he said of the knickers. "I was getting to the level near high school that you got to look cool."
Now Watson stands out with his massive power and the hot-pink shaft of his driver.
"Got to find some way to keep them interested in you," he said. "If I outdrive you with a pink shaft, you can't make fun of it."
Said Cook: "Bubba is still a kid at heart. I think he'll always be a kid."
Watson still dreams as big as he drives, and he belts longer than anybody else on tour. That pedal-to-the-metal personality, however, sometimes gets in his way.
He sometimes has a short fuse and is quick to bark at others, as TV viewers saw during the New Orleans tournament two weeks ago when he got upset at veteran Steve Elkington for walking while he prepared to hit.
"Bubba was a gifted athlete but very temperamental," said Cal Bodenstein, his middle school physical education teacher. "He was so competitive on the field. He thought everybody should catch every pass he threw. He thought everybody should hit a home run like him. He constantly stayed on his teammates. I'd say, 'Bubba, you've got to do something about your attitude. You're too competitive. These kids are not pros.' He thought everybody should excel."
Watson expects it of himself, too. The dominance he displayed in the junior ranks and mini-tours hasn't yet emerged at the next level. In three seasons on the Nationwide Tour and now in his third on the PGA Tour, he still hasn't won a tournament, while all of his local peers have.
"The problem with him right now is he's trying so hard to win that he can't relax," Cook said. "Heath and Boo and Joe Durant have all won, and he hasn't won, so it's getting under his skin. It's just a matter of him winning. Then there is no end to what he can do."
Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.
