Pat Perez still leading desert assault

As humankind continues to make halting gains against the infuriating monster it created, a beast widely known as “golf,” it made a historic discovery Thursday.

It learned that if you get yourself a desert, a week in which the air molecules barely budge, some benevolent pin placements and some courses with fairways in which “you can land 747s,” as Pat Perez put it, you might just get the best 36-hole score in the history of the PGA Tour.

That would be Perez’s 124 at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, where he tacked onto his 61 of Wednesday on the Palmer Course a plain old, pedestrian 63 on Thursday on the Nicklaus Course, to nudge in the trivia books past five golfers who have begun tournaments with two-day 125s.

That would put Perez 20 under, and that would set people speculating about a winning score of perhaps 40 under at the Hope, what with benign conditions and everybody walking around with short irons and long smiles.

“It’s like indoor golf,” Sweden’s Richard S. Johnson said.

“It’s really like playing in a dome,” Perez said.

“When the wind howled today, it howled two miles an hour,” Briny Baird said.

Baird, 36 and yet to win on the PGA Tour (two runner-up finishes), had just become the first PGA Tour golfer ever to start off 63-63 and stare up from second place at a two-shot deficit. His second 63 included an ace on No. 7 he found downright picturesque. Asked if all that pleasure owed to conditions, he flashed a commendable wit and winked, “No, it’s just that I’m that good.”

Perez, 32 and also yet to win on tour (two runner-up finishes), “worked like hell” in the off-season and got married in December in Cabo San Lucas. “Everybody that gets married seems to win,” Perez said. “Paul Casey got married the day after he won last week. [Jason] Gore got married, won. . . . [Rory] Sabbatini, he won. I don’t know what it is. I figured I would try it.”

It’s no wonder Perez has hogged 19 birdies and one eagle to sit at a preposterous 20 under after two rounds. He has brought all that preparation to a biosphere that has doled out 706 birdies among 128 professionals the first day -- eighth-most in any PGA Tour round -- and a mere 665 the second.

In third place behind Perez by three shots and behind Baird by one sits David Berganio Jr., the 40-year-old veteran from Pacoima playing with his sixth consecutive major medical extension.

Berganio, having played no PGA Tour events since last February, and having felt his back protest his career choice for six years, finally, mercifully has found a relatively painless eight months and played Hawaii (missing the cut) and here after withstanding Qualifying School in December.

“So I’m really enjoying myself,” he said, even given the waterlogged bogey on No. 18 that closed his second-round 64, and when he said that, he might as well have fashioned a tournament motto.

Still, even with all the ease, Perez reckons he’d lead no matter what bigwigs had showed up here -- the highest-ranked golfers sit at Nos. 16 and 23 -- and for that he uses the flawless logic that, well, nobody has ever gone 20 under after two days before, so . . .

“It doesn’t really mean anything,” he said. “It’s nice. It means you can get hot for two days. I would like to have all kinds of records at the end of the week. Three-day, four-day, five-day, you know, trophy, Vegas, booze, all that stuff. That’s what I want.”

For these first two definition-of-pristine days, though, Baird might have had the signature shot.

Behaving impeccably, the ball that Baird “thinned” off his nine-iron at No. 7 traveled the 146 yards a bit right of where he wanted, then landed.

“And it took one skip, went behind the hole and spun back into the hole,” Baird said.

“It’s fun to watch. If you’re ever going to draw up a hole in one, that’s the way you would draw it up. It was visible, you see it land, it skips, goes past the hole and draws back in.”

Imagine: golf, the way you draw it up. It’s almost like some desert daydream.

--

chuck.culpepper@yahoo.com