	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

TURNING STONE RESORT CHAMPIONSHIP

August 4, 2010

Tom Pernice, Jr.

VERONA, NEW YORK

ADAM WALLACE: Hi, we'd like to welcome Tom Pernice, Jr. to the interview room at the Turning Stone Resort Championship, the first time this tournament's been in the FedExCup. Tom's currently 129 in the FedExCup. If you could just open us up with some comments about your current position and your thoughts coming into this week.
TOM PERNICE, JR.: Well, obviously I haven't played very well because I'm in this position. You like to come to the interview room when you're challenging for the Top 30 or something like that.
But haven't performed very well, didn't play early. Been playing quite a bit lately, just haven't performed really. Made quite a few cuts throughout the course of the year, and putting has let me down. I think I'm probably tenth from the last scoring on Sunday, so that's been a very disappointing part of the year. But pretty poor year in putting. When you don't putt very well, you put yourself not in great position.
ADAM WALLACE: How about coming into this week, the course?
TOM PERNICE, JR.: The course is absolutely in spectacular condition. I don't know how it could be any better. Looks like the weather's going to be good for us. We've got some scattered thunderstorms maybe tomorrow, but after that the front's moving through, we get some drier, cooler conditions, the greens should get firmer and faster, so I think you'll see some good low scoring on Thursday and Friday, and it may become a little more difficult if we get some wind and drier conditions on the weekend. But I think you're going to see some low scores because the conditions are so good.

Q. Tom, speaking of scoring, going into this year, the talk was kind of like scoring would be a little more difficult with the change in the grooves rule, and we got some 60s and a couple of 59s in recent weeks. Can you talk about that? Is that just a product of the course that they were playing at the particular time or very hot player at the particular time or is there something else going on?
TOM PERNICE, JR.: The grooves don't make an issue when you have soft greens. There's two things that make a difference for scoring not to be low by the best players; that's wind and firm greens.
It was evident at the U.S. Open. You saw firm conditions and you saw windy conditions; very difficult. You saw similar conditions at the AT & T National at Aronimink.
But we went to Canada, we saw some soft greens. We had soft greens last week, not very fast, not much wind. I mean guys are going to shoot low scores. I mean I don't care if it's 8000 yards or 6900 yards. If you've got soft conditions and no wind, somebody's going to play well and make a putt.
So you know, the grooves make a huge difference if you're playing on firm greens. You hit a flyer out of the rough here and the greens are anywhere where the greens are soft it's going to hit and stop, but if the greens are firm all of a sudden it's taking one bounce and bouncing over the green and going 15, 20 yards past, so it's all relative to the firmness of the greens.
So in the summertime when you get thunderstorms and hot, humid conditions, it's hard to get the greens pretty firm. So you saw some firm conditions on the weekend at the Open championship, the scoring was more difficult with the wind, and same thing at Aronimink, same thing at the Open. So it's all relative to having some firm greens.

Q. Can you give a prediction on what the lowest score would be this week and also the lowest winning score, just based on conditions on how they are now and how they might progress over the week?
TOM PERNICE, JR.: What's par here? 71 or 2.

Q. 72?
TOM PERNICE, JR.: Somebody's going to shoot 63 or 4, I would think, on Thursday or Friday.

Q. And total score then for a winning score?
TOM PERNICE, JR.: Well, I don't know because the forecast, if we get some wind out of the north and blowing 15 or 20 miles an hour if this front moves through or something, it could dry out the greens pretty good and firm them up and speed them up, could be a little more difficult, but I don't know if that's liable to happen here in the middle of the summer.
But you know, you're going to have to shoot probably 16, 17, 18-under, but if we don't get any wind and the greens stay soft, could be in the 20s pretty easily. This time of the year with soft conditions, guys seem to go pretty low.

Q. Steve Flesch says this is a second-shot golf course. Do you agree with that?
TOM PERNICE, JR.: Yeah. The fairways are relatively generous. You know, you need to hit some good iron shots to put yourself in position to make some putts, obviously, but it's not an overly demanding golf course off the tee.
There's a few shots that are somewhat demanding, but if you drive it in the fairway here, you know, you need to hit some good iron shots because the scoring's going to be pretty good early in the week, so you'll need to make some putts and you'll need to do it from the fairways. Like you said, you'll need good iron shots this week.

Q. Can you tell us how small the margin really is from being 129th on the Money List, is that where you said you are, and being 30th? Seems like it's very, very small and people probably don't realize how small it is.
TOM PERNICE, JR.: Listen, I don't know my putting stats. Let's say my putts from greens in regulation I'm 140th or 50th and that's maybe 1.79. If it was 1.72, I might be 30th and I might be 30th on the Money List. So my stats are plenty good enough ball striking wise, but no one hits it good enough to be in the top 30. You gotta putt better. So there's nobody in the top 30 that's having a bad year putting that's way up there on the putting stats.
It's not very much. You hear about it all the time, but you know, if you're pretty consistent in your ball striking, it's just a matter of how good you're going to putt. And you see a lot of guys who are putting good that are up there.
ADAM WALLACE: All right. Thanks for coming in, Tom.
TOM PERNICE, JR.: No problem.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297