INVITED CELEBRITY CLASSIC

April 19, 2023

Kenny Perry

Las Colinas Country Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: You mentioned health so to speak, so just bring us up to speed, assess how you're feeling.

KENNY PERRY: Well, other than gaining a few pounds this year and a half I've been off, I feel pretty good.

You know, I've had this hip issue where I've had kind of nerve or whatever, a lot of inflamed -- it's like fire, you know, like going down my leg.

I've been kind of fighting that for a year and a half. And I've been taking all kinds of medicines and stuff and my buddy said, you need to try Aleve. I never tried Aleve leave before.

I tried it for the first time about three days ago and it has been a miracle worker. I hadn't had near the pain.

And so hopefully my goal is to be able to get out there and be able to get back to walking again. We'll see how it goes. I'm anxious to get started here and picked this week. Since I took my full retirement I've only got 11 tournaments. I'm a summertime player, so I want to get in the heat and get old bones loosened up.

I figured this would be great place to start since my daughter lives here in Fort Worth. She lives off Colonial Country Club there, so had some good memories there the last five days. I was hanging out with here and my three grandsons that are there.

So it's going to be a good week. I'm looking forward to it.

Q. You've had such success on both tours. I know this will be your first tournament back in a while. How much have you missed it and how enthusiastic are you about getting back to it? Or are you just more you just want to ease back in and see how it goes?

KENNY PERRY: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Just going to kind of ease back in. I didn't play any golf last year, so completely golf-free.

Picked the clubs up couple months ago and got back to work. Hired a PT guy to help me with my health and worked out three days a week with him, so got at it pretty seriously.

Yeah, I'm going to just kind of take it slow. I'm never going to attack it like I used to. To me, it's coming back seeing my friends, my family. These are my family, people I battled with for 40 years. It's great to get the hugs and say hello to everybody and just to be a part of the tour again.

It is kind of hard to just drop something for a year and a half that you've done your whole life. That's all you know how to do. It's kind of hard sitting all home at times and watching on TV and wishing you were there.

But it's exciting. I'm glad to be back. I've never played here until yesterday, and excited to get started here. Looks like a great golf course, great place to start for me.

Q. What have you been doing? I know you obviously got your best friend Sandy with you.

KENNY PERRY: Correct.

Q. How have you been spending your time? I imagine doing some fun stuff away from the course.

KENNY PERRY: Well, I've got nine grandkids. Three are here in Fort Worth and six are back home in Kentucky close to the house. I've got a 12 year old that's -- he's fantastic. He shot 63 at 12 from ladies tee at my golf course, and is -- I took him to Charlotte. He made it to the finals of the Drive, Chip and Putt last year.

So we were at Charlotte and he's in the 11 to 12 year olds and one the kids gets up there and averaged 303 or whatever for the three balls he hit. Hit them all in the fairway. I looked at Rowdy, I said, you can't beat that no matter how well you hit it.

He didn't make it out of Charlotte, but it was a great learning experience. He made it to World, so we're going to go to Pinehurst No. 2 here this summer. I get to watch him. So we got soccer, dance, gymnastics. There is a lot for us to do at home. We're the taxi. We pick them up, take them, haul them around, and let the parents do the work.

Q. So you need to come back out here to get a break.

KENNY PERRY: Exactly. Well, I didn't really have a break. We had dinner with them last night, and it is so hilarious, Lindsey yelling at them. They were getting under the table at the restaurant, wouldn't get up and listen.

I said, I remember these days. (Laughter.)

Q. Unique format this week, incorporating the celebrities. How much are you looking forward to that?

KENNY PERRY: I don't know it. What do you mean? It's still individual...

Q. Yeah, yeah, you're playing your own event, but just going to have celebrities.

KENNY PERRY: Oh, that's fantastic. I saw a lot of the names. I played with a lot of guys before, so it's always exciting to have them out, to not have to talk about golf. They don't want to talk about their sport, we don't want to talk about ours, so it works out well. For five hours we're out there battling and trying to get questions out of them.

Q. Kenny, why did you walk away?

KENNY PERRY: Well, it was -- it really was for Sandy. People, I've told it before and mentioned it before, about three years ago the kids came to me and said, something is wrong with Sandy. To me, we went to kindergarten, we ensuring grew up together. We been all through grade school together. We been together our whole lives.

I just didn't pick it up. My antennas were not up. Not paying much attention. So we went and had some tests done on her and they said it's early Alzheimer's.

So all last year we were at Vanderbilt, talking to all different type of doctors. Went to a holistic doctor. I'm trying to find something that will help cure it, slow it down, whatever.

That's kind of the goal here, is to figure this process out. We found some good doctors but there is really not a lot out there to cure it. But what we have found, what she has is slow. It's a slow process. So few years, we've got a few years here, a little window. Hopefully somebody comes up with a cure or something to slow it down or whatever is causing the problem, we figure it out.

So that was my goal, was to attack that and try to figure it out. Now that year and a half has gone by we kind of figured out what's going on a little bit and got a little bit of a handle on it.

So, you know, you look at her, talk to her, you wouldn't think nothing is wrong. But we just want to enjoy life a little bit, see the grandkids, play a little golf, enjoy -- you work so hard to get to a point in life you want to enjoy it. You don't want to have to be at doctor offices struggling.

So we're going to enjoy it and try to figure it out and find a cure for this.