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WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIPMay 6, 2011Pat PerezCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA DOUG MILNE: Pat, we know you've got a lot going on, 7-under 65 today heading into the weekend with a two-stroke lead. Congratulations on great play. PAT PEREZ: Thank you. DOUG MILNE: Obviously excited to be heading into the weekend, so we'll just get some initial comments on how you're playing and then we'll just take some questions as it relates to the weekend. PAT PEREZ: You know, playing great. I've been playing great the last month. This week I guess I just made some more putts, and the confidence is just getting more and more each day I play. That's about it. Q. Was it five of the last six? PAT PEREZ: I don't even know. I birdied 10, bogeyed 11, birdied 13, 14, 15, 17, 18. Seven birdies on the back? Is that right? Q. I think it was six. PAT PEREZ: 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, six on the back. That's not what I had in mind when I stepped on the 13th tee, let me tell you that much. That's not a comfortable stretch going through. There's not a comfortable stretch out there at all. Q. What was going through your mind standing on 13? PAT PEREZ: Nothing. Nothing really. Because at the time all the focus is on Lucas, so I was like a side thought. So I didn't really show any pressure. He was playing great golf, and he shot, what, 6-under through 10 or something, and that putt he made on 10, the crowd went crazy. They're all Clemson fans out there, so they're all for him. They didn't know I was there. Q. You not only changed your swing, you basically did a 14-club tear-down, right? PAT PEREZ: It took me about 20 drivers to get the right one. That one I got now, that R11, is money. Q. Not only equipment, every part of your game. PAT PEREZ: Oh, every part. Yeah, I'm working with a new guy Mark Winkley who teaches a lot of golf machine but basically just teaches the swing. He doesn't teach -- he teaches plane. He wants the plane to be on the same line going down as it goes through, which is how the ball goes straight. I came back from LA, and I couldn't have been any more upset. I had made no money, and that's my favorite stretch of the year. I got back with him, and I said, man, I've got to fix something. My coach, Mike Abbott, he went away for a little bit, and I said we've got to fix this. I said, this is ridiculous. He said, I can fix it in five minutes. He goes, I've been watching it now for a year and I know that it's not right. I said, well, let's get on it. I said, Monday morning be on the range. We're going to work every day for three weeks. We worked about eight hours a day for three weeks. The first week was just miserable because it was such a change. When I made the first changes, I went from real steep to real flat so the club moved about that far from the top of the swing, and then now I had to go back about this far up to get it back on plane. And then I had to try and -- so I got it going for the most part. We worked on hitting the inside of the ball, and then it got to the point where my release wasn't right. I was working so hard on this part that I didn't get this part. So it didn't come until -- I talked to Elkington about it, too, and he knows about as much as anybody that's ever walked the face of the earth about golf, and he gave me some pointers there through that stretch, as well. He was telling me about the release of my hips to hit the inside of the ball, and that clicked. And I got on that San Antonio range on Tuesday and I didn't miss a shot, and I went out to the course and didn't miss a shot, Wednesday didn't miss a shot, and I thought, that's it. That's the missing piece of what I need to do. Once I see something that works right, I go with it. I don't care what it is. It's just going to go because I know what I was doing before ain't going to work. So I had no problem taking it to the course. It's just been great. And then I fixed my putting. I went from cross-handed back to regular-handed with my old putter I had from ten years ago, which is a heel-shafted putter with a lot of offset because I wasn't seeing the line. From 12 feet cross-handed I see the line -- the way I did it, you take two lines -- you take a two by four -- it's not a two-by-four, it's like 12 feet long, and you paint two lines this way and at the end of the other side you paint two more lines, you basically set up until you see these two lines run into the other two lines. This I learned a long time ago from Carl Welty back in '91. He said, I don't care how you stand, but you've got to see the lines straight. And I thought about that. Again, because during those three weeks I went through a lot of thinking process of what the hell did I used to do. I used to be a great putter and what the hell happened, this and this, and I said, well, that cross-hand is out. So I grabbed this putter. I was just screwing around at the house and the putter was buried back in one of these bags I had and I pulled it out and I got set up to it, and I go, that's it. I took to the course the next day, and I said, watch this sh--. You know, and I said, this is it. I'm taking this to the course and I played La Estancia every day and was killing it. I said I'm taking it to San Antonio next week. That's it. Q. How long since you'd used that one? PAT PEREZ: Funny enough I finished -- the last time I played with it was in San Antonio at La Cantera and I finished fourth, so San Antonio again, so it had some mojo in that town, and it worked. Q. Do you recall why you benched the putter after San Antonio in '06? PAT PEREZ: I must have just gotten too out of whack with it and had some outside advice that I didn't need and went away from it. I don't know, but that's why you never get rid of anything. Q. What do the lines look like again? PAT PEREZ: It's like a 12-foot two-by-four, and you paint two lines on one side of it and two lines on the other side of it, and you just basically get in a posture until you see those two lines run into the other two lines, and for me it has to be open. My feet have got to be like this and my whole body has to be open because for whatever reason, I'm left eye dominant, I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but that's the only way I can see the line. I was the worst -- I don't even know if there's a stat, but if you look at me with left to right putts, I don't make any of them because on a dead straight putt I'm looking -- from 12 feet I'm looking a cup and a half to two cups right anyway, so now there's no way for me to get lined up on a putt that breaks two and a half cups to the right. Now I can see it. Q. You're at a point now where you're playing golf and not playing golf swing. Bubba is talking about Tiger getting too wrapped up, Two Gloves doesn't have any swing thoughts. PAT PEREZ: None. He's the most talented guy out here. Well, Bubba, too. You'd call their swings definitely unconventional, and they hit the ball in the middle of the face every time. Tommy has definitely proved himself that it doesn't matter what the hell it looks like because it only matters from here to here in the swing. If the face is square here and here and here, ball is going to go straight. The rest of it doesn't matter. Q. So this new putting thing, you're shooting scores. Are you playing golf now? PAT PEREZ: Oh, definitely, because in LA I was playing swing and I didn't think about hitting it -- I didn't have a shot. I was just hoping not to hit it into trouble. Now I'm seeing different -- when I look up, it's going where I think it should go, and it's nice. It's nice, because now it's been a run. It's been a run of a month where it's going, and hopefully it continues. Q. You shot 80 in LA was it? PAT PEREZ: Probably, I don't know. Probably, but it was bad. I probably quit on the third hole. It doesn't even matter. When you can't hit it, it doesn't matter. When it's raining, the whole show, you've got rain and you can't hit it anyway and you're hitting it 250 off the tee, it's pointless to be out there. That was a low for me because it just sucked. It sucked, because I know where I can play, and that just wasn't it. Q. Given the extracurricular activities you were kind of thrown into last week and then being sought after, for lack of a better word, early this week, was there any part of you that was just happy to get back on the golf course? PAT PEREZ: Yeah, a lot of me. Well, you know, last week didn't -- it didn't involved me. If it would have involved me, I would have given you guys everything that happened. But it didn't involve me, so it really wasn't my place to say anything. Yeah, like I told my caddie, it's so nice just to have a nice -- Sean O'Hair is one of the greatest guys in the world. I love playing with him. And Rory has his moments. I've always gotten along with Rory, and I know how to -- like I said, I know how to deal with him and stuff like that. For the most part Rory doesn't even bother me in the least. It was a tough situation, and I'm hoping it never happens again because you never like to see two players go at it. It just sucks because no one wins in the end anyway. But yeah, it was great to be on the course, and I knew I was playing well, and this is such an unbelievable venue here. They can't do any more for us than they do. It's just nice to get out and play again. Q. You said something to Mike about just wanting to -- just happy to be back -- PAT PEREZ: Just nice to have peace on the course and having some laughs and all that kind of stuff. It was nice. It was fun. Q. Would you call your changes you made since Northern Trust major, minor? PAT PEREZ: I'd call them major, but it came to me pretty easy. I've always been pretty good at taking something and just going with it and working as hard as I can on it. The whole body release thing for me is different, and the guy I had in mind when I was doing this whole thing was David Duval. He almost didn't even look at the ball when he was hitting it, so for a lot of the time, I thought Duval, Duval, release as hard as I can because I would always get to impact and my body would be stopped and then my arms would fly, and then the only thing that would make my body move is the fact that my arms were moving at that speed. I'm trying to get my body to release and go first and just let the club follow like all the good players do, the guys that win. Q. Last time you went through the swing change, how soon was that before you won the Hope? PAT PEREZ: That was at Tiger's tournament, his first one, the AT&T, whenever that was. It was whatever his tournament was in '08, and I really started to get it in the off-season, and then one in '09, and then it just started to go too far. No one understands, those swing changes were actually about halfway at the time, but it was actually at the right place, so we should have just stayed there, but we kept going and going and going, and I kept getting more this way and this way, and it didn't work. But at the time I was right in the middle of the transition, and it was actually perfect. So if I would have never changed from there, it would have been fine. Basically I'm trying to get back to that position. It's not the same work to get there, but it's the same position. Q. Can you think of another time that you put 18 birdies together in two rounds? PAT PEREZ: The Hope. I was 20-under for two days. I think I made -- you're the stat guy, are you kidding me? I'm never in here so you wouldn't know. (Laughter.) Q. I'll have to dust off the Pat Perez file. PAT PEREZ: I think even that stretch I made 21 in two days at the Hope. Maybe 21. I think I had two eagles in there. Q. On a real golf course. PAT PEREZ: Well, I mean, I've done it at home. I don't think I've ever done it out here. I didn't even realize I had made that many because I made enough bogeys that -- basically I played the holes that -- I guess if you can't think you would birdie them out here, I played those well. I made a bad bogey on 11 but there's just some holes out here that bogey is not actually all that bad because wherever they put the pin or whatever the wind is doing, if you've got 4-iron into a hole and the pin is tucked or whatever, 5 really isn't going to kill you, because you see from the scores, it's really not that bad. So I really try to -- I've worked on it a lot, forgetting bad holes and just moving on, which I wish I would have done about ten years ago and haven't. But I've just gotten better because I feel like I'm playing so good that a bogey is not going to kill me because I can get on a run of birdies. That's the way I've felt about the last month. DOUG MILNE: Let's take you back to Bob Hope last year. When you finished you were signing some autographs and one little kid said, "Hey, champ, are you going to come back next year and win again?" And you said, "I don't know, probably not." (Laughter.) PAT PEREZ: Stat man will tell you -- what is the percentage of defending anyway? Q. This year no one has defended successfully, only one top 10? PAT PEREZ: What about like five years? It can't be 10 percent. Q. No, it's not. PAT PEREZ: I guarantee it's not 10 percent. Tiger is the only guy who was ever doing it, maybe Phil, but for the most part, how many new winners do we have in the last two years? It's so hard to do, because the courses are so different. You get totally different elements one year and the greens could be different, a guy's confidence could be different. A year is a long time. It's hard to do. It's hard to do, and that's why it doesn't happen. DOUG MILNE: We know it's getting late, and we appreciate your time. Good luck on the weekend. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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