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THE SHARK SHOOTOUTDecember 10, 2009Kenny PerryNAPLES, FLORIDA MARK WILLIAMS: Kenny Perry, thanks for joining us in the interview room The Shark Shootout. Here for the seventh time in a row. A couple of victories with different partners and you got another new one this year coming back to kind of defend, I guess, but just comment on your past history here and playing with JB this week. KENNY PERRY: Looking forward to it. JB and I, I was hoping we were going to be partners at the Ryder Cup a couple of years ago, but that didn't pan out for us, so I was excited to get the opportunity to play with him. Definitely going to miss my old partner, Scott Hoch. We had such great camaraderie, great chemistry. He's a lot of fun to be around. His wife and my wife are great friends. Just seems like we gelled. We had that great chemistry. I don't know if we ever finished out of the Top 5 or Top 3 of this event, and we were able to win it last year. He hurt his wrist. He couldn't play. Doctor said he can't really start hitting balls till next week, so he called and told me, so that gave me the opportunity to ask JB. So as long as this golf course is playing, I'm excited, because he's 50 yards ahead of where I hit it, so like on 18 I hit 4-iron in there today and nine I hit 5-iron, so I'll be hitting 8 and 9-irons like I normally hit. This golf course usually plays firm and fast, and it's playing really soft and long. I've never seen it play like this before, so definitely going to be a big advantage for us if he can keep his driver in the fairway. MARK WILLIAMS: Obviously with you two you've had a great year this year, a sensational season with a couple of victories. How much longer do you think you're going to do this? KENNY PERRY: Well, I don't know. That's a great question. I turn 50 in August, so you'll see me play both tours a little bit trying to see where I fit in at, and if my health stays good, I'm going to play. I've got a bad elbow right now I've been fighting with. I don't know what's wrong with it. It hurts. I feel like some strength is coming out of it, and it's really been hard for me to play. So I called Paul, the doctor here, Hobaica, I think that's how you say his last name. And he got me some medicine, and it felt a lot better today, so I thank him for that. And we'll see. I'm icing it a lot, and you know, just -- if I physically stay together, you know, I'm going to play, but if I get to hurting all the time, I'm probably just going to kind of scale back a little bit and play the events I enjoy and I love. So I'm not exactly sure at this point. MARK WILLIAMS: Okay. Gentlemen, questions? Q. Have you talked to other people, like Fred Funk or somebody that most recently has come out and tried to play both tours? KENNY PERRY: I've got the same answer from all of them, from Nick Price, Funky and all of them. They say, you need to be -- when you come to the Champions Tour, you need to be ready to come play there, you know, because they say it's totally different. They say once you -- you know, if you still feel like you can play on the PGA, you need to stay there, they say. But if you feel like you just want to go have fun, relax, they say the atmosphere is totally different. It's totally different kind of golf, and they say they have a great time out there. Their advice is if you don't think -- if you've had enough of the PGA, Champions Tour is great. Come hang out with us. Q. I ask this question of Greg as well, but at Augusta this year. Records are made to be broken. Do you see in the future that somebody over 50 could win a major? KENNY PERRY: Definitely. Definitely. You know, you used to see guys think their career was over around 37 or 38. Now you see guys, you know, Jay Haas and Fred Funk kind of started it, some of the elder players that play very well through their 50s. Jack played up till he was 50. So I think golf with physical fitness and a lot of the guys staying in shape, equipment and technology is keeping them in the game, and I definitely see somebody doing it. I really do. I mean I think I can do it, so I mean I still hit it far enough, I'm going to be 50. So we'll see. I think there's going to be one generation that comes in there, they're going to be very strong. Q. Following on from the Augusta question, you had a great season, so obviously it didn't affect it too much psychologically. How did you get over it? KENNY PERRY: I enjoyed it. I had fun. It didn't really bother me, you know, because I was there. I proved a lot of things to myself that week, knowing that I could compete at the highest level, at the, quote, the ultimate tournament that I always wanted to win, you know. I put everything right there. And for 70 holes had it. I played beautifully. I had a game plan. I went in there, it was flawless from tee to green, and I just got a little ahead of myself on the last couple of holes and got a little out of my comfort zone, and didn't -- you know, couldn't make it happen. But I think I learned from it. And you know, the '96 PGA taught me a lot. It took me a couple of years to get over that playoff loss to Mark Brooks. But this didn't bother me at all. It was just a few weeks later I ended up winning again. It was fun. To me I'm enjoying it more, you know. It's pressure, yeah, but yet it's not going to change my life one way or another if I win or lose. I think that's what's made it simple for me. Q. Do you pursue this one a bit -- I always think of Augusta as [inaudible]. Do you do much working out physical fitness wise? KENNY PERRY: Never have. Q. That's always coming. So you still feel you can -- KENNY PERRY: Well, no, I've actually within the last 15, 16 months I've seen a decline in my game, strength wise, physical wise. I've already talked to my wife and friends, and I told them if I'm going to be competitive, I need to change my ways. Am I going to have the desire and energy to want to pursue that at my age, I don't know. That's a good question. But I do think I need to change my ways if I want to get back the pop I had in my driver. I've lost some yardage off the tee. I can tell I can't -- I used to have that extra 10 to 12-yard drive or 15-yarder. I could actually kind of make it jump a little bit when I hit it hard. I can't do that anymore, so we'll see. You know, am I going to -- I don't know if I've got the energy and desire to want to do that, you know. It's been a great career. I've enjoyed my career. Everything's been awesome, so if I stay healthy and the family all stays okay and we all stay together, you know, maybe I will pursue it. But my wife's mom's doing pitiful. She's struggling. I don't know how much longer we're going to get to keep her. I just lost my mom, and my dad's 86. There's a lot of family issues at home that we're dealing with, so we'll just have to wait and see. Q. So your 2010 schedule, do you feel like you want to get out there and head for Hawaii or does that seem to you -- KENNY PERRY: Yeah, I'm taking all the family to Hawaii. I've bought them all tickets and hotel rooms, and I took about 20 over there a few years ago, and now we've got about 12 or 15 going this year, so I'm taking them all with me. Maui will be kind of a celebration week for us, but then I'm not going to play again until the Match Play. Q. So you will then play it by ear after that? KENNY PERRY: Yeah. I'll play Match Play and then I'll defend at Waste Management Phoenix Open, which Waste Management Phoenix Open is the last tournament on the West Coast this year. So I'm going to stay away from all the multiple tournaments, Bob Hope, San Diego, AT&T, or Pebble, whatever it's called, just to kind of conserve my energy a little bit and then head back down here. I'll probably play three in Florida. I'll play the Doral and Tampa and Bay Hill. That's kind of how I'm setting my schedule up for next year. Q. You've accepted the invitation to come here many times. What is it about Southwest Florida, Tiburon and the Shark Shootout specifically that you like? KENNY PERRY: Well, I looked at the weather at home. It's 26 degrees with a wind chill of 15. It's 82 outside here. That's a tough one. That's one reason, the weather is awesome here; and the tournament's a lot of fun. It's a time, if you play great, great. If you play poorly, fine. You've got one of your buddies playing with you. You got all the guys from the year, we're all needling, we're having a lot of fun, camaraderie through the tournament. It's very competitive. We all want to win, but at the end if you don't, it's still a great week. It's fun. And I think after you've had a long grueling year grinding and grinding and grinding it's fun to just go have a tournament where it doesn't really matter, just go play. Q. Walk me through a little bit. This is the end of the season. When do you start looking at next year? Is that something you do during the previous season or will it be somewhere here in the future that you start looking at the next season, putting the tournaments down? KENNY PERRY: Well, I've already done it. I mean I've only got, what, two weeks off for Christmas and then I'm leaving January 1 for Hawaii. So you know, I only got a couple weeks off. I've already looked at my schedule for next year. Q. Kenny, you said you were going to check out the new grooves last week at Chevron. How's that going and how much of a process is it? KENNY PERRY: Well, I played a set last week. I've always played a perimeter-weighted offset golf club. I played a forged blade last week. I felt like I was 18 years old again and thought I could hit a 3-iron way up in the air like I used to. Found out I only hit it head high now. I actually got a new set of irons flying in here in the morning. I hope they get here before I play at 10:44 because they're definitely going right in the bag. So it's just a process for me. I played with that set I had all my luck with for the past two and a half years. I didn't change nothing. Now it's kind of thrown a wrinkle in me to have to completely give my irons up that I loved so dearly. So that's been a big adjustment. TaylorMade has come out with the new R9 stuff, and we're trying to get the soul and the bounce right to fit my golf swing. It's not going to be a problem. We're going to get it right and I'll have the best equipment that I can have. It's just a matter of timing, I guess, to get it right. It may not be right for Hawaii, but hopefully by the time I get to Match Play I'll have the equipment I'm going to be successful with. Q. Can you talk about the dynamics of some of the other guys you've played with? You won with John Huston, and you've won with Scott and now you're playing with JB. KENNY PERRY: John Huston is probably the greatest Bermudagrass putter, period, in the world. He read all my putts. He's won all his events I think have been on Bermudagrass, and he taught me a lot about Bermuda, about reading greens and just blew me away as to how good he was on the greens. I'm a bentgrass kind of putter. I've always been more of a lag, more of a dye putter, so that was awesome. John and I, he didn't say a lot, I didn't say a lot. We were pretty quiet out there. John's -- he's kind of a quiet assassin. He is funny and he's from this area. Being from Tampa, he's not too far away. And he's got a great sense of humor, and we had a lot of fun. And it's very similar to Scott Hoch, where Scott Hoch to me was a money machine, one of the Top 10 players in the world for the longest time and world-class short game. So where I helped him out last year, you know, he was having wrist problems. It was so funny, I'd hit a good drive, he wouldn't even hit his drive. He'd just leave the driver in the bag, and where he helped me out was chipping and putting. He's such a good chipper and short game, that's where we kind of meshed, and we've always had a lot of fun. Scott and I always played all our practice rounds together when he was out on regular tour, and we're just really good friends, and that was easy for me. Every time we played together, we were always -- we were the first group to ever get a two-stroke penalty in the scramble format on Sunday. I mean that's impossible. You can't do that. We had putted 1-up on the 15th hole. We were like in first place or second place at the time, and we didn't finish out. We were going to practice putting on the green. We forgot we still had a foot and a half to putt in, and Scott said we had a senior moment. So anyway, that was interesting. So you know, he's just -- I think the secret to this tournament is just to have fun. It really is. I think the looser you are and the more you have fun, the easier it is to be competitive out there. Q. Do you think you and JB are -- KENNY PERRY: I don't know. You know, JB and I play a lot of practice rounds together. JB is very quiet and he's very competitive and very intense individual out there, so hopefully I can kind of loosen him up a little bit. If I keep hitting it -- if I drive it fine, if I'm driving it straight, it's going to take all the pressure off him. We can just let that big driver go out there. We'll see. I don't know if we're going to have a lot of chemistry or not. I've only seen him for about a minute this whole week so far. And we haven't even talked strategy. I guess we'll do that in the morning. But I'm looking forward to it. He's a great kid, Sara, his wife, she's awesome. Sandy and Sara love -- they have a good time, so we'll have a good week no matter what. MARK WILLIAMS: That's great, Kenny. Appreciate you coming in and giving us the time. Thank you. KENNY PERRY: No problem. End of FastScripts |
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