text: After back-to-back wins at Hilton Head and scoring 2 1/2 points for the victorious 2008 U.S. Ryder Cup team, Boo Weekley has only four top 10s in the past two seasons. Fortunately, everyone's favorite orangutan fighter is coming out swinging in 2011. The Pensacola News Journal caught up with Boo as he prepares to start his season this week at the Sony Open, and he said he's ready to be his old self again, even if it means ruffling a few blazers in Ponte Vedra.
  "I'm ready to get back to the old Boo and play golf, show a little more attitude on the golf course," said Weekley, who makes his 2011 debut at the Sony Open in Hawaii on Thursday. "Once you get out there (on the PGA Tour) they lure you into their perspective of how things should be done on tour — You can't act up, you can't do this, you can't do that. I'm ready to get back to being who I really am on the golf course. If I want to throw a golf club, I'll throw the (darn) thing. If I want to beat my bag … I know they don't want to see that, but hey, that's me."
  It's also good to hear Boo worked on his game during the holidays, something he said he's never done, and he also played practice rounds on the Bob Hope courses in California before heading over to Hawaii. Hopefully the work pays off. Boo is one of the most entertaining players on and off the course. Here's a small sample below from the 2008 Ryder Cup.
  Them's the Rules ESPN's Bob Harig talked with PGA Tour rules official Geoff Russell and the USGA's Mike Davis about Camilo Villegas's DQ at Kapalua. Harig poses the question a lot of people are asking: Why not just assess the penalty to his score and let him play?
  "We have had formal requests to review that," Davis said of both the USGA and the R&A, which governs the game outside of the United States and Mexico. "We've gotten it from the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, European Tour … and we have looked at it. One thing that has been proposed is assessing the penalty, and then adding an additional 2-stroke penalty — so it would be a total of 4 strokes [if the penalty came to light after the card was signed]. At least the player would still be in the field.
  "We looked at it long and hard. At the end of the day, it just didn't gain traction. There are just so many ramifications. We don't really like how the golf world is viewing these type of things, but at the end of the day, it is the players' responsibility to know the rules."
  There is nothing stopping the PGA Tour from instituting a local rule that is not covered in the USGA rule book.
  But good luck with that.
  "We could do that, but I don't know if we want to do that," Russell said. "It just doesn't work like that."
  Storyteller There are 26 rookies this week at the Sony Open, and with the pro-am washed out on Wednesday, Golfweek's Jim McCabe used the opportunity to ask Jim Furyk about his first event as a rookie.
  Prepared to warm up in a traditional manner, meaning he took out his wedge, Furyk surveyed a hard right-to-left wind he was going to hit into and took aim at a flag to his left.
  “I hit it really fat . . . I blew all this dirt and sand up in the air and it just coated the guy next to me,” he said.
  Furyk looked and was sick to discover it was Lanny Wadkins, sort of an iconic figure on the PGA Tour back then, renowned for being the ultimate no-nonsense guy.
  Tweet of the Day
  @RealRickyBarnes: Pulled out of the Sony. I will b[e] back soon either Bob Hope or Farmers in San Diego. Back was bothering me a bit but another weeks Rest need[ed]