Pars Do the Trick for Perry : Golf: He has 12 in a row on his way to a 70 and an unlikely victory in Bob Hope Classic.

All you need to know about the last day of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic is that one golfer parred the last 12 holes Sunday and finished with a very ordinary 70.

And he’s the one who won it.

“I never thought that would happen,” said Kenny Perry, who is that golfer.

Neither did anyone else. Maybe Curtis Strange did, but he wasn’t talking.

Coincidentally, Strange’s silence began right after he hit a ball into the lake on No. 18.

For Strange, this meant bogeys on two of the last three holes and a fall from a tie for the lead to a tie for third.

Perry was respectfully grateful.

“I was very fortunate,” he said.

As expected, it was a putting contest. It’s just that not many were going in.

Normally, on a fast track like Bermuda Dunes, you shoot 12 consecutive pars like Perry and you wind up so low they have to dig up to bury you.

But just to show that golf’s a different game when the greens get dried out overnight, Perry’s score of two-under par was good enough for a one-shot victory over David Duval and a 90-hole score of 335, 25 under par.

It was the third PGA Tour title for the 34-year-old Kentuckian, who already is planning his retirement back home in Franklin, Ky., where he will run the public golf course he’s building and maybe coach the high school golf team.

Perry won $216,000, which he said is going to help pay back some of the $1.5 million he and his brother-in-law borrowed to build Country Creek in Franklin.

He led by three shots on the final day two weeks ago at Pebble Beach, but shot par 16 times, finished with a 72 and wound up third.

Perry needed to think about his focus again.

“When you borrow $1.5 million from a bank, that gets you focused in a hurry,” Perry said. “I just take the money from here and give it to them back there.”

Perry’s unexpected path to victory began the way everyone thought it would. He birdied three of the first five holes, inducing 15-footers to disappear into the hole at No. 4 and No. 5.

But he missed the green on the par-four sixth and bogeyed when his two-footer didn’t crawl in.

After that, Perry had a putting problem, seemingly at the worst time.

“For 4 1/2 days, I was putting great, but after that (bogey), I was afraid every time I brought the putter back,” he said.

“I just didn’t ever think I’d be in here shooting 70 on Sunday at Bermuda Dunes and win the golf tournament. But I was able to win not playing my best. I hung tough.”

With a glance at the scoreboards on every hole, Perry soon discovered that the hard greens weren’t being very nice to everyone else.

“I thought ‘Well, they’re having as much trouble as I am,’ ” he said.

Perry was right, of course.

Duval had three birdies on the front, but managed no better than par on every hole on the back until No. 17, when he missed the green and saw his seven-footer for par make a U-turn at the hole.

“I don’t know why there weren’t many birdies,” Duval said. “The greens were a lot harder (and) you had to bounce the ball in. Basically none of the putts wanted to fall.”

Duval’s tap-in birdie at the 18th won him second-place money of $129,600.

Strange finished one shot behind Duval and tied for third with Dillard Pruitt, who closed with a 65, and Tommy Tolles at 337, 23 under par.

For a while, it looked as if Strange would break his six-year winless streak, especially after he birdied the par-five 13th to tie Perry at 25-under.

Strange’s third shot hit the flagstick and his two-foot birdie putt got him even. But Strange lost a stroke when he bogeyed the par-four 16th after his chip ran 15 feet past the hole.

Then came his second shot on the closing hole. Strange aimed a three-wood at the flag, but the ball went right and disappeared below the surface of the water.

“He came off of it a little bit and handed the golf tournament to me,” Perry said.

His turn next, Perry could play it safely. He got on the green in three and two-putted uphill from 18 feet to win. Perry finished with par, of course, which clearly was good enough this time out.

“What a great day for me,” he said.

Perry is working with a three-year timetable for quitting the tour, mainly so he can go back home and be close to his family.

He already has an offer to coach the Franklin High School golf team, and he’d like to coach his 9-year-old son Justin’s baseball team.

Then there is Country Creek, a three-year project which is due to open in three months. Country Creek’s success will determine how long he plays on the tour, Perry said.

“I’m going to play as hard and as long as I have to, just to see how the golf course is going to run,” he said.

But maybe it won’t be that easy to sit back home at Country Creek and collect $20 green fees.

“All I ever wanted to do was to be a tour player,” he said. “All I ever wanted to do was play golf. I had a lot of people tell me I’d never make it. That’s fine. That probably motivated me.”