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THE BARCLAYSAugust 20, 2008Kenny PerryPARAMUS, NEW JERSEY STEWART MOORE: Kenny Perry, thanks for spending a few minutes with us in the interview room at The Barclays, first event in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. You come in this week the highest-ranked player in the field, and for all intents and purposes, No. 1 on the points list. Let's go to your health, you had to withdraw from the PGA Championship with an eye industry. Can you give us an update on that? KENNY PERRY: Interesting week. Spent three days at the doctor last week trying to get my eye fixed. I've had LASIKs done twice and I still wear contact lenses and what had happened, my contact had warped, and it scratched the cornea of my eye and it got infected. I was very light sensitive, so it was just very hard to play golf that way. So I withdrew from the PGA and spent three days with my doctor last week and we finally had enough medicine and got a new pair -- this is my third pair of contact lenses in my left eye, third one of the week, and it feels real good and I'm seeing pretty good out of it. I'm excited and it doesn't hurt. I don't have any pain. My vision is good again. So it's back to where it was when I was playing well, so I'm looking forward to it. It was just bad timing, bad luck, just a bad deal all around, but I'm glad it happened last week, that week where I could get it fixed to get ready for the Playoffs. STEWART MOORE: Playing this afternoon in the Pro-Am, and you played yesterday and you said this golf course is tough. KENNY PERRY: A very long golf course and it's a driver's golf course. I played with Corey Pavin and he had 232 in probably six or seven of the holes out there. He's hitting wood into all those holes and I probably averaged 190 into the holes so I was hitting 5-iron. It's a very long golf course. And it shapes -- a lot of the holes shape right-to-left and they kept saying, this is your hole and this is your hole and I kind of agree with them. It fits my eye the way a lot of holes dogleg right-to-left and it seemed like a draw would definitely fit good on this golf course. Still tough to learn a golf course in two days. I miss Westchester because I felt -- I've played there so many times and I knew all -- I knew that course very well. So I've got to be a quick study this week and kind of figure out the greens and where you want to hit it and miss it, and they have got terrible rough around the greens. So it's going to be -- you don't want to miss these greens. It's going to be hard to pitch out of this, I guess it's a bluegrass rough, I'm not exactly sure, thick, heavy rough that reminded me a lot of Oakland Hills. It's definitely going to be a ball-striker's week. Q. One year into this FedExCup Playoffs system, what are your thoughts on it? KENNY PERRY: I liked last year's version better -- no, because you couldn't move much last year and now it's like here I come in here this year and I think 11,000 points is first place, if I understand correctly. I guess if the scenarios work, the guy who finishes 144th, if he wins, he could be No. 1 in points next week, if I have the math right. I'm like y'all, I don't know exactly how it goes. I'm definitely going to have to play well. What I think is kind of a bummer, if I don't play well these three weeks, I won't be in THE TOUR Championship. I mean, I've had a great year, and I think that's not right. I don't think that's fair at all for me to win three times and be kicked out of THE TOUR Championship, but I've kind of been kicked out of all of the tournaments anyway. I won the Memorial and that didn't get me in the U.S. Open. Anyway, that's how my year has been going and I have to keep proving myself and I have to somehow get back on the horse and play well this week. Q. Points aside, there was skepticism about the system last year; where do you put these four tournaments in terms of evaluating importance of tournaments? It's not a major but where do you put these? KENNY PERRY: You know, it's hard to answer that question, because now, all of the importance is on these three tournaments. It looks to me like what I did this whole year didn't matter and I don't think that's right. I think there should be some kind of system to where it favors the guy that's had a good year. I mean, you don't see the guys in like baseball, if they have had a mediocre year, they are not going to get in the playoffs. I don't see any other format where the guy who has just kind of gotten through the year has a chance to win it all. I just don't think that's the way to do it in my opinion. I think it should favor the guy who has played well throughout the year, but it's not going to be in effect this year at all. I think you'll see somebody come deep and out of the pack that could actually win this thing, if I understand it correctly. I may not understand it correctly, I don't know. I really don't understand it anyway. But when I kept hearing how high the points were, it kind of bothered me. Q. Let's switch from the FedExCup back to the course. The greens here, some slope left, some slope right, have you had a chance to read the greens, and how important is it when you're hitting approach shots to keep the ball below the hole? KENNY PERRY: Well, I have the secret out there and if I tell you, everyone is going to know. You know, the ridge that runs through the middle of the golf course? It's true, everything breaks away from the ridge no matter where you are. It reminds me of Riviera. Everything from Riviera runs back to this area of the golf course; all of the greens, doesn't matter where unless you're on a real severe slope, and it has a tendency to affect all the putts. I kept paying attention to the ridge all day, all day, and you know what, it worked. That made me feel more comfortable about the greens out here. They are faster than they look. They will roll them and speed them up and there's a lot of slope on them and you will definitely have to keep them under the hole. But if you understand the ridge effect, you can get a feel for the speed of the greens and knowing that it may not look downhill, if you're going away from that ridge, it's going to be a fast putt no matter what. For me to not have understood that; my caddie, he talked to some of the locals around here and they gave him that information. So it was nice to have a little local knowledge. Q. I don't know if you got this sense, but the locals say that it gets tough after the first six holes; do you have that sense? KENNY PERRY: I didn't pay any attention to the first five holes. I can't hardly even remember them right now. I just remember the par 5s are all 600-plus. I couldn't get to any of them. And I know that one that's six whatever, there's rough that cuts across the fairway; and if you hit it in the rough on that hole I know you're going to have to lay up short of it and you're going to have 240 into the hole for your third shot. I noticed all the holes were very long. I was hitting a lot of driver, mid-irons, driver, mid-irons and I knew if I missed the fairway, I wasn't going to be able to get it to the green for my second shot and I was going to have to lay up, and you're right. It's definitely going to be -- you know, driving it in the fairway is a premium this week. The rough is pretty bad. And I'm not great at chopping it out of that rough and getting any power and having to get it to the green. But the driver is the strength of my game. When I'm on with my driver, I don't miss any fairways. Q. The driveable par 4, No. 5? KENNY PERRY: It was into the wind. We had a north/northwest wind yesterday, and it was straight into the wind and I had it just short of the front bunker. That might be the smallest green I've played on TOUR. I've never seen a green that small in my life. I notice any of the guys that hit full sand wedges, no matter where they hit it on the green it came off the green. If you get just enough spin it will come off every time, even if you land it on the back of the green. I think the secret to the hole is to hit it up there as close as you can in the rough to where you can't get any spin. It will be an interesting week. I hope the wind turns around to where we can have a shot of getting it on the green. I played with J.B. Holmes but everybody knows how far he hits it. He hit it past pin-high yesterday, no problem. Q. One of your teachers, was in earlier for the Transitions Optical announcement; do you wear sunglasses at all? KENNY PERRY: I have regular glasses that are Transition Lenses glasses and I have a bifocal pair. I have a no-lens bifocal pair and a Transition sunglass pair with no bifocals in them that I can that wear on the golf course. For me it's totally different looking through my contact as opposed to my glasses. My depth perception is totally different when I have any glasses on it and bothers me. When I had the LASIKs done, I played through 2003, 2004, and 2005, my vision was halfway decent and I didn't need anything. And then it just progressively got worse and worse, and I got more and more nearsighted and I had to go stronger and stronger and stronger on the power and that's why I put contacts in. I tried to play in sunglasses over my contact lenses and I just don't see the grain right and I don't see the grain properly. To me vision is everything in golf, optically, how you see everything, it's very important to the player I think, and some guys they like it. They enjoy playing it and do well in them but me personally I've just not had much luck in wearing any kind of sunglasses. Q. I know this is The Barclays, but Valhalla is looming and you've been excited for that all year. For some of the guys outside of the 10- to 20-ranked guys who have not been picked yet or qualified automatically, are there any of those guys who you are fond of or guys you would like to see make it in that bunch? KENNY PERRY: I've said all along, I want the guy that makes birdies. I told Paul, he needs to go to the list -- everybody knows our stats on TOUR, and The Ryder Cup is about making birdies. You need to go to a guy who is an aggressive player who makes lots of birdies. I would personally love to play with J.B. Holmes. I could see two Kentuckians going out there in our home state, and if we could somehow win our matches, it would bring a huge charge to the American Team, as well as to our State of Kentucky. Q. Did you plan anything special there to entertain the guys or offer local knowledge? KENNY PERRY: I haven't been there since Jack redid the golf course. Jack has come in there since the 2000 PGA and redid the green complexes and the holes and I don't have any local knowledge there anymore. He took it away from me. I'll go in there the week before, we have an open date, and I'll be spending a couple days out there on my own charting the golf course. Hopefully I'll have some local knowledge the next week when we show up for The Ryder Cup. Q. Do you remember where you started last year going into Westchester in the points race? KENNY PERRY: I was high enough to where -- I was like 50th or 60th -- because I was playing with Nick O'Hern every week. Doesn't matter how well you played, you got paired with the same guys every week. It was funny, Nick and I got paired all three rounds and neither one of us made it. It was so hard to move. You had to win two in a row or whatever to just slip by a few people it seemed like for us being far back. I think that's the reason why they kind of changed that point system a little bit. Q. At what point did you realize you were not going to win, mathematically? KENNY PERRY: I knew when I didn't win the first one, I was toast. Even if I won the next two, I was probably out of it. Q. And Ryder Cup question, do you think the fact that you guys will be playing pretty much up to the Ryder Cup, as opposed to past years where guys took off and then flew in? KENNY PERRY: I think it will definitely help. Plus everybody is having to play who did not make the top eight, which is kind of cool, those next four. Everybody is playing hard. Paul said that he would take -- if anybody got hot, like a guy who was 115th on the Money List, if he won the next two events, he had a good shot at making the team according to Paul. I don't know how true that is but we'll see what happens. It will definitely keep everybody sharper no doubt. Q. You mentioned two Kentucky guys going out there and having a lot of crowd behind you. There was a similar situation with Tiger and Phil having the crowd behind them and everybody expected that would be money in the bank. Didn't work out that way and deflated the team. KENNY PERRY: Yeah, I was on that team, 2004. I was there. Q. When that happened, does that really have a deflating sort of effect on the team? KENNY PERRY: I thought so. I mean, to me, your two top stars keep getting beat, we just kind of follow suit and fell right in behind them. That was a tough week. It just seemed like the Europeans kept making putts on us at the right time and we didn't make enough birdies. It was all about momentum and it just seemed like we never could turn the tide that week for whatever reason. Tiger and Phil, they kept losing, so we just kept following right in behind them. You know, I guess they made us want to play harder to try to win for them, too, as well and pick them up but I guess, I don't know, just never happened for us. Q. And with that being said this year, Tiger is not on the team, do you get a sense with him not being on the team that it might be more of a stronger team bond rather than a one-man -- is there anything positive of him not being there? KENNY PERRY: No. You can't take the best player in the world off our team and say you're a better team no matter what. I'm good friends with Tiger, and I'm going to miss him in the locker room and I'm going to miss him in the clubhouse. He's funny. I like to aggravate him. (Laughter). But in a sense, now we're all going to have to be a little more accountable. I think maybe we laid off a little bit, the rest of the team, when we knew Tiger, that's a point. We always count on him and always believed he's going to win no matter what, and he's proved it throughout his career, even though his Ryder Cup record is not very good, his tournament record is very good. And maybe we got lazy or lackadaisical or whatever you want to call it but now we have to be a little more accountable. Now our team is going to have to step up and each player on the team realizes we cannot lean on Tiger and we are now all accountable and we are all going to have to show that up week. I think our mind-set will definitely be a little different but there's no way you can say we will be a better team without him. Q. That's what I meant from a mind-set point of view; when Tiger played, you always assumed that would be a point and now you don't have that. KENNY PERRY: Correct. Q. Another FedEx question. I guess you skipped the British. KENNY PERRY: Correct. Q. Was a calculated move to play a tournament -- would be picking up points? KENNY PERRY: Well, I played Milwaukee that week and finished sixth. I made points, 400 points, but if I would have finished sixth in the British, I would have made double or triple, I don't know how that goes. Q. Just your thought behind that strategy? KENNY PERRY: Well my focus this year was on The Ryder Cup, and I didn't want to -- I picked my schedule early in the year to make The Ryder Cup team and what happened, I peaked too fast. I want all these tournaments and I didn't calculate on being exempt into the British. I was 100-something in the world starting out the year, so I end up winning three to shoot me in the top 20 in the world and I wasn't in the Open. I didn't get in our open, I wasn't qualified. And then I was exempt for the British and decided not to go and go to Milwaukee where I've had a win and eight Top-10s. Wanted to stay in the country this year and stay on my time schedule and keep my rhythm going and get ready for The Ryder Cup because that's all I focused this year was The Ryder Cup. Q. If you make THE TOUR Championship you would be looking at five straight weeks with the Ryder Cup. KENNY PERRY: Well, we've got a week off in between there. Q. Do you pace yourself at all for that? KENNY PERRY: Definitely. I'm going to have -- because the week off I'm going to go to Valhalla to do work for The Ryder Cup. This year I've focused to make The Ryder Cup team and I've made it and now I have to figure out a way to be mentally and physically sharp for that event. But I played good playing a lot of tournaments in a row. Memorial was myself seventh straight week and I won Memorial. I won Boston one year playing 13th in a row. It was my 13th straight week. It really doesn't bother me. It's nice when I get in that groove and that feeling. I can carry that on and get hot and streaky. I'm a streaky player and I can usually carry that on for four, five, six weeks. I've lost a little of that MoJo there; had a poor Akron at Bridgestone, and I missed the PGA. I've had four weeks where I can have some downtime and get fresh and hopefully get back to the way I was playing and carry it on through The Ryder Cup. Q. You're No. 2 in the FedEx standings right now. You have Sergio and Padraig, who was won the last two majors and Sergio as well right behind him in the PGA. What do they bring to the competition and the tournament this week? KENNY PERRY: Well, you get a strong field basically. You get the best in the world here. When you've got the best, it's fun to compete against them, because if you beat the best, you beat strong fields. It just brings a lot of confidence to you. It's going to be interesting. I still don't know how to answer these questions because I don't understand the points system and how it's going to play out, and only time will tell, from last year to this year. And I'm sure they will adjust it next year after they see how this year goes and eventually them come up with the formula that's correct. Any time you get the strongest players in the world at your events to showcase the TOUR, it's only going to help the TOUR and can only help the players who are playing well. Q. Last year Tiger skipped the first event, and Phil skipped another, and so had it been last year's system this year, would you have played in all the events, or would you have thought about taking any of them off? KENNY PERRY: I could have taken them off last year because I wouldn't have dropped anywhere. It wouldn't have mattered where I was last year, so it don't really matter. And this year, the guys, they can't take a week off. There are so many points out there, I think the reason why they did it, to get the top names and make them play all three weeks. Q. But if last year's was in place this year? KENNY PERRY: Oh, yeah, I would definitely have thought about taking a week off, definitely. Q. If you answered this earlier, what's your overall assessment of the course and how do you think it's going to play this week and what kind of scores do you think it will take to win it? KENNY PERRY: You know, scoring is always based on conditions, where they want to set the pins. This is an old, I guess, Tillinghast who did this golf course. It's a beautiful venue. It's a beautiful golf course. I love those big old trees out there, and the tree-lined fairways gives you a lot of direction and tells you how to shape the shot. I can't answer score. Since we never played here, every time I said -- I said over par would win the PGA and 3-under won. I don't think it's going to be that many under to tell you the truth. I think it will be around 10-under. I don't think it's going to be a real shootout or anything. But that all varies on how they want to set the pins, and we're going to have beautiful weather, so we're not going to have bad weather and that won't be an issue. You know, it never ceases to amaze me, there are just some courses guys can get on a roll. I marvel at how they can shoot 20-under on a golf course where I can't hardly shoot 6-under. Some courses fit the eye. Like Memorial, I can go in there playing terrible for whatever reason and I can play great at that golf course. I think for the clubhouse, the range, how they have set it up, it's a tremendous facility. And the people have been great up here. I've enjoyed the gallery so far. But I liked Westchester. Some people thought it was a quirky golf course but I always seemed to play great there and I understood how to play that golf course. I don't understand this one yet. I've only been on it one day. I'm going to get to play the Pro-Am here at 1:30 so hopefully I'll learn a little more. These tournaments, you can see a guy come out of the pack that you've not heard of that will play well this week, because it's a free for you will. It's anybody's game this week. Q. How do you like playing in New Jersey and the northeast? KENNY PERRY: I love Baltusrol. Played great there. It's not like Kentucky where it's hundred degrees and humidity is 100%. Doesn't seem like we have a lot of humidity up here and it's a little bit cooler and it's a nice time to be up here. STEWART MOORE: Kenny, thanks so much and good luck this week. End of FastScripts |
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