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WASTE MANAGEMENT PHOENIX OPEN

February 24, 2010

Kenny Perry

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

MARK STEVENS: I'd like to welcome Kenny Perry to the media center, our defending champion for the Waste Management Phoenix Open. If you'd talk a little bit about how it played today, how the golf course was, and then a little bit about coming back to defend this year.
KENNY PERRY: Well, it's always great to be back. This is probably one of my top five tournaments on TOUR. I always look forward to this week. To me the golf course is a golf course that's just fun to play. I just like going out there and playing. It's not overly long. There's a lot of risk-reward holes out there, and it's just fun, the atmosphere with the galleries and with the famous 16th hole and everything.
I thought the golf course played great. It's in great shape, fairways are good, greens are up to speed. They're firm. I think you're going to see some guys shoot some good rounds. I think with the rain that's been in here over the weekend -- I think the desert has had a lot of rain. You're above schedule on rain, I think, and you're going to see some really good shots and a lot of good scoring. I think I won last year at 14-under, so I think it's going to be lower this year.
The rough is up but it's playable; you can actually move it on some holes. You can actually still get it on the green out of the rough. I think last year the rough was very penal; if you hit it in the rough, it was chip out and struggle from there.
I drove it nicely today. I think I shot 5-under, but all the pins were right in the middle of the green, and it was actually a fun round of golf today, so I had a good time.

Q. What was it like going around, even though it's pro-am, as the defending champion? Did people recognize you, and this place I assume they're yelling out a lot of things?
KENNY PERRY: Well, yeah, it's been very positive, very encouraging today. I had a lot of people want their pictures made with me. I heard "defending champ" pretty much from the first tee all the way to the last tee. That's always a special feeling. It's even hard to win one tournament, and when you finally get a win at a place, how everybody supports you is pretty special.

Q. How are the green speeds compared to last weekend?
KENNY PERRY: They're close. They're getting up there. I think the TOUR will probably have them pretty close to the same speed. You know, these greens are a lot flatter than last week. Last week has a lot of rolls and buried elephants I call it in the green, and you can get some really slippery putts where -- for true speed, I think these are pretty close to those. They've got them up there. I know when I was here last week practicing they were fairly slow. I was amazed a couple days ago how fast they got them ready for the tournament, so they're ready to go.

Q. You were discussing this, but everybody knows the reputation of this tournament and the noise and the fun, but golf is a game as you grew up playing it, silence and shh. Was it tough to adapt? Did you hear from other players who had played here before you what it was like, and when you finally arrived here what was your reaction?
KENNY PERRY: I think it was pretty intimidating at first. I think guys like me, I'm a 25-year guy out here, so you don't pretty much -- you listen to the young kids in the locker room, and a lot of people don't come here because of that hole. They won't play here because they don't want people yelling at them and stuff. So I've seen that end of it.
But yet all in all, most of the guys really enjoy it. It's only one hole a year. We really don't have this atmosphere anywhere else on the PGA TOUR. Kind of 17 at Warwick Hills in Flint was kind of like that, but not near the vocal level. There was a couple other holes.
It's truly unique -- it's a fun hole. You know you're going to get booed if you miss the green. I birdied it three times last year, three out of the four times I played it last year, so it was a very special hole for me last year.

Q. What's the most creative thing you've heard from a fan at 16?
KENNY PERRY: I don't know how creative it was. I think they had a computer out and Googled my name. But they knew I liked old cars, they knew I liked motorcycles, what college I went to, I went to Western Kentucky. They knew my fight song, they knew who the mascot was. It was pretty neat. You know, they kind of pull up little odds and ends stuff and they're yelling at you the whole time, which is cool. They're not yelling anything negative at you, they're just telling you what you already know, and I think that's pretty neat.

Q. Was that the first time you had heard some of that stuff?
KENNY PERRY: Definitely, definitely. I was not expecting some of that. I've had the, "you've got an ugly sweater on" or I've had a few of those yelled at me. That's more what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting any of that stuff. That kind of shocked me, which I thought was pretty neat.

Q. Do you try to acknowledge them?
KENNY PERRY: Definitely. You definitely don't want them on your bad side.

Q. Would you like to see the game open up to bigger crowds like this? Is this something that could be good for the game? This is unique, but would you like to see more of it on TOUR?
KENNY PERRY: Well, yeah, I wouldn't have any problem with it. I mean, but there's just -- golf courses cannot handle 100,000 people on it like this course can. Maybe TPC at Sawgrass it's kind of got the stadium, the elevation, where you can get a lot of people out there. But the way most courses we play, it's impossible. You get four, five, six deep around the green you can't see anything if you're standing back there. My wife gets hung back there, she gets to complaining a little bit that she can't see anything.
So the design of this golf course is very unique and it's very special. I think they're going to have to change the way they're thinking about building golf courses for spectators if they're going to want to create this atmosphere, not necessarily the holes, how the holes are laid out, but necessarily how they set up the sides of the holes, the mounding and everything to where you can actually get people around to view what's going on out there.

Q. How does your game compare now coming in to where it was last year when you came?
KENNY PERRY: Well, you know, let's see, I did okay, I remember, at Kapalua, and I think I Top 10'd it at AT&T which I didn't play this year, and I lost first round at both -- I've lost the first round the last three years at the Match Play, so I'm pretty much identical in the same situation I was last year.
And I distinctly remember I was 4-over par going into 15 last year on the first round, and I hit a good drive on 15, and shoot, I'm 265 out, and I was just mad. I said, give me the 3-wood. Normally I'd lay that up. Hit 3-wood in the middle of the green and I ended up birdieing I think the last four holes, or either I was 3-over and I birdied three of the last three holes to shoot even par, and then I shoot 63 the next day. So I was this close to missing the cut, and I didn't even realize how close I was to winning the golf tournament. I was pretty much out of it, the way I was thinking and the way my mind was; I was frustrated.
But it was a great comeback to end up -- I remember I made about a 65-footer or 45-footer on 18 for birdie to shoot 72 to actually save the round, and then I was on fire and shot 63 on Friday and crept close to the lead or maybe got the lead. I don't remember how the rest of it panned out. But to end up shooting 14-under -- I guess I'm in the exact same situation I was from last year.
I just love this golf course. It seems I'm kind of a creature of habit. I've won the Memorial three times, Colonial twice, I've won the Buick twice. It seems like when I get comfortable at a golf course that I enjoy playing, no matter how I'm playing at the time, I still feel very competitive when I come in here.

Q. Nobody has won back-to-back since it moved out here, and I think the first person to win back-to-back at all was Johnny Miller in like '74 or '75. Do you feel pretty good about your chances of defending it successfully?
KENNY PERRY: Well, you know, people have been asking me do you think you can defend, and my answer was no. But that's an honest answer. It's just going to have to be -- I'm just going to have to figure out a way to get it going like I did last year and be patient. I know I'm going to have to shoot 15-under plus.
I've been having some elbow issues this year that's really been aggravating me. I've really struggled. It's really hampered my ability to practice. I went down and saw Dr. Andrews in Birmingham, Alabama, and he just said I was old. It was just tendonitis, basically what everybody kind of deals with, and it's really hampered my ability to take the golf club back. It's the bending of my right arm has really been killing me. I've really been very concerned about that this year.
I haven't played a lot this year because of that. I've kind of been home resting and hoping rest would kind of solve the problem, but it's actually not. I'm actually in the same situation now that I was when I started the year. I don't know how that's going to turn out, but I'm not going to say -- I'd be almost -- it'd be crazy for me to think I could come in here and win it back-to-back.
I love the course, and I like how they set up the golf course, and I especially like how I'm driving the golf ball right now. I missed one fairway today, which if I start driving it any good where I can actually attack these pins, it's going to get fun. It's going to give me some opportunities to make birdies.

Q. Last year around this time when you won, you were talking you thought you still had four or five more victories in you, and then later on in the year you had some family issues and kind of started talking semi-retirement.
KENNY PERRY: Well, it was tough. I lost my mother in October and then I almost lost my dad, but he's doing better, thank goodness, and I kind of pushed all those thoughts aside. I've kind of been getting home and getting grips with what's going on at the house and with the kids. My son is caddying for me now. I started gathering everybody I could and started spending more time at home.
I would love -- I kind of threw that 20 number out there to watch all the writers roll their eyes up in the back of their heads, which is probably -- I threw that out there because I threw making the Ryder Cup team out there as one of those goals. I was 100-something in the world back in 2008, and then I went on and won three in the summertime of 2008 and got me on the Ryder Cup with team there with Paul back home at Valhalla. That was kind of a carryover -- this tournament was kind of a carryover from 2008. I had a lot of momentum coming into this year, 2009, and it just proved to me that the sky's the limit if I just continue to work at it and focus in on what I'm doing.
But life has its changes. What's important? Is it important for me to go out there and try to focus on being the best in the world, or do I need to settle in and focus on my family and what's going on at home? And that's kind of the direction I've been going lately.
MARK STEVENS: Thank you very much, Kenny.

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