KAPALUA, Hawai'i — Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were among four PGA Tour winners who decided to stay home from the Mercedes-Benz Championship and the start of the 2008 season.

Boo Weekley thought he might be staying home, too, although not by choice.

He left his tiny town in the Florida Panhandle at the crack of dawn Friday and didn't arrive in paradise until the early morning hours Sunday. That he made it as far as Kapalua was a minor miracle, considering an oversight that showed how little golf and how much time Weekley has been spending in his beloved outdoors.

Airport security found two bullets from his rifle in his carry-on bag.

"That was kind of like, right out of the gate started the whole week for me," Weekley said yesterday. "They put the red flags on me. I had the cops there. I thought I was going to jail."

He used that bag during a hunting trip to Illinois and never saw them when he packed for Hawai'i. But as Weekley soon discovered, those airport scanning machines don't miss much.

"I just begged and pleaded," he said. "I just sat there and shook my head like I was an idiot, you know? They confiscated the bullets and then broke down a bunch of stuff, got in everything and put a flag by me. They said they were going to red flag me."

Once he got out of that mess and arrived in Atlanta, he missed his connection by minutes and had to spend the night. Weekley, his wife and son and her parents then caught a flight Saturday morning to Los Angeles, where they spent nine hours in the airport because of delays.

But it was good to finally arrive and soak in the view of the Pacific Ocean from his villa.

"It's a pretty view," Weekley said. "I live on the water down where I live. It's just a different name for it. It's called the Pacific here instead of the gulf."

The Mercedes-Benz Championship is for winners only, but it will have only a 31-man field when the season begins Thursday. Woods, a seven-time winner in 2007, is skipping for the third straight year. Mickelson hasn't been to Kapalua since 2001. British Open champion Padraig Harrington typically takes a long break in Ireland this time of the year, and Adam Scott called over the weekend to say he was taking the week off because of exhaustion.

Weekley won the Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head and finished 23rd on the money list with over $2.6 million. He wound up representing the United States with good friend Heath Slocum at the World Cup in China, where they lost to Scotland in a playoff.

Weekley is among 14 newcomers to Kapalua. That includes Sony Open winner Paul Goydos, whose previous victory in 1996 was when the Mercedes-Benz Championship was held at La Costa.

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