Silly Season preview: Good ol' boys head to China

If you insist on calling it the Silly Season, then it might as well generate some laughs, right?

Well, these two Americans abroad might be the funniest pair in cleats and pleats since celebrity golfers Hope and Crosby filmed those famous road pictures in Zanzibar and Morocco.

Small-town yokels Boo Weekley and Heath Slocum will be representing the stars and stripes in China later this month in what's accidentally become the most interesting event on the PGA Tour's two-month offseason schedule. For anybody who knows the pair's background, the notion of them mixing with the Chinese nationals sounds downright silly, indeed.

Confusion meets Confucius.

Weekley, the self-deprecating country boy who became a Scottish cult hero at the British Open in July, speaks in a homespun drawl that might require an interpreter. That is, somebody who can translate Panhandle into Chinese.

Not only will they be representing the United States in the two-man World Cup event Nov. 22-25, which is staged under the World Golf Championship banner, they'll be standing up for the largely rural Panhandle area of Florida. Specifically, both are from Milton, a tiny suburb of Pensacola. More amazingly, they both graduated from Milton High in 1992, when they alternated as the top player for the talented Panthers golf team.

"I tell you what, they could open a new era in U.S./China relations," American Scott Verplank cracked.

Kissinger and Nixon, they ain't.

Weekley got a call from his agent the week before the season finale at Disney World. One of the players picked to represent the U.S., Arron Oberholser, had undergone wrist surgery and couldn't play, so Weekley became the next option chosen from the money list. First, Weekley's agent had to explain what the World Cup was.

"It got pitched to me about four or five days ago, and my agent called me up and said, 'Hey, do you want to go to China? I know you didn't want to play this winter because of the hunting season,'" Weekley said. "I said, 'I don't know. What is it about?'

"He said, 'It's the World Cup; you represent the United States.' And I said, 'Is that all?' And he said, 'No, you get to take a playing partner.' And I said, 'I'm in if Heath can go.'"

Weekley called Slocum, one of the most underrated players on tour, and asked where he planned to spend Thanksgiving week.

"I talked it over with my wife, and once we talked about the dates -- it was Thanksgiving, and I was going to miss it -- I told Boo I would call him back tomorrow morning," Slocum said.