Monte Burke, 03.25.09, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated April 13, 2009

Salt-of-the-earth Boo Weekley is exactly the kind of player the PGA Tour needs to get it through the recession.

It’s impossible to tell the story of professional golfer Thomas Brent (Boo) Weekley without bringing up the orangutan. When Weekley was 15 he and some friends went to a county fair near Milton, Weekley’s hometown on the Florida Panhandle. A man at the fair had an orangutan in a cage and was offering $50 to anyone who could lay a hand on the ape. Weekley jumped in the cage. “The next thing I remember I was in the back of my buddy’s pickup truck, bleeding,” he says.

This type of thing never happened during the childhood of Tiger Woods, who was groomed from birth to become the greatest golfer in the world. Weekley wasn’t supposed to be a PGA Tour golfer (even though his Milton high school has miraculously produced three of them). He’ll tell anyone within earshot that he’d rather be bass fishing than taking a stroll down the fairways of Augusta National. He likes beer in cans and eats at Hooters. He flunked out of college after one year. He cleaned chemical tanks during 12-hour shifts at a Monsanto (nyse: MON – news - people ) factory until he got laid off. When he finally gained entrance to the PGA Tour in 2002 he flunked out of that, too, and nearly gave up on the game. “I took golf for granted for a long time,” he says.

Weekley is not the best player on the tour (he’s ranked number 57), nor does he make the most endorsement money (about $2 million annually); both of those honors still belong to Woods (number one in the world, with an estimated $90 million in annual endorsements). At 35, Weekley is not a fresh-faced prodigy like the confident 23-year-old American Anthony Kim or the floppy-haired 19-year-old Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland. He does not create the escape-artist drama of Phil Mickelson.

Yet Weekley is exactly the type of golfer the tour needs to endure the recession. He has the colorful history. Two years into his second chance on the PGA Tour, he has become one of its most popular players, serenaded with “Boooo” by fans at every tournament. Few, if any, golfers work harder for sponsors. And he can play: Golf purists consider him the best pure ball-striker in the game, and he was a hero of the United States’ Ryder Cup win in 2008. “He’s a little different,” says PGA Tour Commissioner Timothy Finchem. “But he’s been terrific for us.”

The PGA Tour is on more solid financial footing than most other professional sports leagues. Its contracts with NBC and CBS go through 2012, and the tour struck a 15-year deal in 2007 with the Golf Channel on cable.Accenture (nyse: ACN – news - people ) and Travelers Insurance have extended their tournament sponsorships through 2014.

But the tour is not immune to the lousy economy, and is heavily reliant on Woods, who is only now back from an eight-month recovery from a knee injury. TV ratings fell sharply in his absence. CBS lost 48% of its audience for the final round of the AT&T National in July. The tour has also watched its automobile and bank sponsors pull back in the wake of losses and bailouts. Chrysler removed its name from the Bob Hope Classic. Buick is scaling back its involvement with events. The Wachovia (nyse: WB – news - people ) name was dropped from one tournament. Stanford Financial Group’s ten-year contract to sponsor the St. Jude Classic in Memphis looks questionable, given that Stanford is in receivership. Two sponsors, US Bank and FBR, have declined extensions, and Ginn Resorts has pulled out of its contract. Bailout recipient Northern Trust (nasdaq: NTRS – news - people ) got lambasted in February for throwing lavish parties during its tournament in Los Angeles, forcing the tour to fight the perception of being a game for the corporate welfare elite.

That’s where Weekley comes in. Says CBS’ lead golf commentator, Jim Nantz: “Boo breaks down a lot of images of what a PGA player is supposed to look and sound like.”

Most golfers tip a hat or primly wave to the crowd. Weekley bear-hugs spectators during rounds. He sometimes wanders into the throng, listening to people’s stories about deer hunting. ”I enjoy the crowds. It’s not that hard to talk to them, to have fun with them,” says Weekley. ”They pay my bills.”

Fans relate to his Everyman interviews, where he’s called Augusta National, the most hallowed golfing venue in the U.S., “just another golf course,” and quipped to a tent full of press corps that he’d “rather be catching a 10-pounder.”

Stephen Wilmot, director of the Verizon (nyse: VZ – news - people ) Heritage tournament in Hilton Head, S.C., says Weekley was the first champion in the history of the event to attend Sponsor Day, where he mingled and shook hands with the tournament’s underwriters. “His presence there makes us look good,” says Wilmot. “I want the folks from Coca-Cola (nyse: KO – news - people ) and Anheuser-Busch to say, ‘This is great’ and want to be involved in the tournament.”

William Poole, head of Sponsorlogic, which consults with PGA Tour sponsors, says Weekley’s willingness to do these events is a rare trait among pro golfers. “Some of the players have forgotten that it’s up to them to promote the sport,” he says. Weekley’s efforts on the corporate side have earned him two handwritten thank-you notes from Commissioner Finchem, who is imploring PGA players to “make the extra effort” with sponsors and tournaments. “Boo had already been doing that for two years,” says Wilmot.

Weekley has some atypical endorsement deals for a PGA Tour golfer. Mossy Oak, the camouflage print company, has backed him since 2002, the only golfer the company sponsors. “Boo is maybe a better hunter than he is a golfer. He dresses a deer better than anyone I know,” says Ronald (Cuz) Strickland, a senior vice president at Mossy Oak. “And every time he says the word ‘hunting’ on CBS or NBC, it’s a win for us.” Weekley has also endorsements from Bass Pro Shops and Big Buck Sports, not exactly Tiger Woods’ Accenture and Nike (nyse: NKE – news - people).

As Boo the brand has grown, so has his sponsor base. BackOffice Associates, a Massachusetts implementer of sap software, signed Weekley in 2007. “It sounds like part of a strip club, don’t it?” says Weekley. For company cofounder Thomas Kennedy, the endorsement goes much further than a logo on Weekley’s collar. “When Boo is at a tournament and sees one of our employees in a BackOffice shirt, he walks right up and says hello and thanks them for their sponsorship,” says Kennedy.

MasterCard (nyse: MA – news - people) signed Weekley last year to a roster of endorsers that also includes two nattily dressed tour players with international profiles. Scott Seymour, who brokers MasterCard’s player deals as the senior vice president of golf at Octagon Sports, recalls seeing Weekley at the Merrill Lynch Shootout tourney late last year going into the volunteer tent, unprompted, after the tournament to thank them for their work. “People were shouting ‘Boooo,’ and he sat there and had a beer with them,” says Seymour.

Weekley’s utter lack of pretense is a product of his background. Nicknamed for his childhood infatuation with Yogi Bear’s sidekick, Weekley was a multisport athlete in high school, but injuries led him to the noncontact sport of golf. He enrolled at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Ga. to study turf grass management and play on its golf team. He flunked out after one year. “I just never did like school,” he says.

He went back home to work at a Monsanto plant that manufactured yarn and lawn chemicals. His job: tank cleaner. Wearing a hard hat, a face shield and a Kevlar suit under some rain gear, Weekley was lowered into 1-million-gallon chemical tanks and cleaned the seals with a high-pressure hose. He worked there for three years, playing golf only on the occasional weekend.

In 1997 the factory went through a series of layoffs. At one point it was between Weekley and a man who had been hired shortly after him. Weekley says he told his boss to keep the other guy. “He had three kids,” says Weekley. He went back home and drew unemployment for a few months.

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