Kenny Perry is not playing golf like any 48 year old guy is supposed to play golf. Not on the PGA "flatbelly" Tour anyway. He’s won 5 time, gotten 12 top ten finishes, and not missed a cut in just over a year. Pretty hot stuff. Oh, and he set a tournament record in winning the Travelers Championship by three shots over Paul Goydos and David Toms. He opened his tournament with a nifty 61, nine under par, then followed that with a 68 which kept him in the lead after 36 holes. On Saturday he shot a 66 and lost the lead to Mr. Goydos, whose third round 63 matched his opening round score. Come Sunday though, it was all Mr. Perry after a 32 on the front nine, and had gave a five shot lead after the 14th hole. “Everyone kind of asks about the Augusta hangover deal,” he said. “I guess I kind of shoved that aside a little bit. So that makes me feel pretty good.”
That had to be a big shove, don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s easy to bogey the last two holes of a major championship to fall into a playoff, then lose the playoff and just shrug that off. No that’s takes a kind of tough not everyone posesses. “I knew that I had to keep making birdies,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let up. I wasn’t going to play defensive golf. I learned something from that mistake.” That’s how you follow up with a back nine 31 and get a nice silver cup and a big pot of money at the end of the day.
Mr. Goydos said he felt a 63 would be needed for him to win the tournament. But when you don’t start playing well until the 15th hole that’s a number that’s hard to reach. “I don’t want to run and hide from that,” he said. “He played like a guy who’s won 14 times. I played more like a guy who’s won twice, especially early in the round.” Maybe that is the problem he faces every time he get in this position, which has been a lot recently. He plays like a guy who just wants to make a living, not a guy who wants to win golf tournaments. It’s a mentality issue, and as we all know mentality is the killer of great rounds more often than ability, or lack there of. Mr. Goydos has proven to me over and over he’s got plenty of game, he just needs to believe that himself. You don’t shoot 63-68-63-67 and not have enough game.
Mr. Perry is now one step closer to achieving his goal of winning twenty tournaments before he sails off into the Senior Tour sunset. He’s at 14 today. That’s asking a lot over the next two or three years. But hey, he still hits the ball 299 off the tee on average, is fourth on tour in greens in regulation, and can putt better than average so who am I to question. I wouldn’t put it out of his reach just yet, considering he’s won 11 times since turning 40. Who knows, he could win a couple more this year.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I had an Open hangover all week. The golf I saw in Hartford was quality stuff, but I was still in a waterlogged fog. I don’t say that to disparage Messrs. Perry, Goydos, and Toms; or the rest of the field for that matter. It’s just a disinterested day after the day of the worst hangover one ever experienced. A blah sort of feeling. I’m thinking it should be gone by the end of the month. After all, the 4th of July is this weekend, which means summer’s almost over doesn’t it?
