Perez ends his drought on tour

From the desert comes an obituary that requires no condolences:

The reputation of Pat Perez as that hot-headed dude who regurgitated a four-shot lead at Pebble Beach in 2002, made quadruple-bogey on the 72nd hole while leading by one, did really mean things to his three-wood and never has won on the PGA Tour, ended Sunday.

It died at age 6 in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, yielding to the fresh image of a rather stoic Perez striking a six-iron in a gusty late-afternoon chill on No. 18 of the Palmer Course at La Quinta, then watching that thing soar and land and nuzzle up three feet from the cup, so picturesque you could almost hear violins.

Farewell, worn-out image of Perez. Hello, closing eagle. Hello, fifth-round 69 in suddenly testy conditions. Hello, 33 under par, 327 total, three shots ahead of Long Beach native and UCLA product John Merrick. Hello, first victory -- in his eighth tour season.

Hello, fresh thoughts.

His San Diegan father Tony thought, “What this tournament has done, it puts Pebble hopefully in the background. Now we’re going to look at this shot instead of other shots. Redemption.”

And as Perez doffed his black cap and made the happiest golf walk of his 32-year life toward the green after a winter of profound toil in practice, “What I thought really was, it’s about time,” he said. “I put the work in, it’s been just over seven years. It’s about time.”

Still, he planned to “get smashed tonight and wake up tomorrow and watch the highlights. Then I’ll realize.”

In the six years he closed Pebble Beach by hitting shots both out of bounds and into the ocean and by saying, “I will always remember that last hole, always,” Perez had minored in vague contention. He’d logged 26 top-10 finishes, 12 in the last two years, but never committed any graphic squandering. Even if he did give his golf ball the middle finger -- and, really, who hasn’t? -- in Miami in 2005, he had calmed gradually.

By the time he led the birdie bonanza for three days here and turned up Sunday at 30-under, three shots behind Steve Stricker, he could describe himself with an indispensable word, “ready,” even if Stricker seemed too scalding to make the fifth round any referendum on Perez’s moxie.

But when Perez rapidly birdied Nos. 2, 3 and 4 to catch up, then sent his tee shot on No. 5 caroming off a rock and into a drowning, it wound up revealing his long-improved temperament. “Before, if I made double on five, the tournament was over,” he said. “I look at that as just a speed bump now.”

Soon, his approach on No. 6 bent left and smacked a middle-aged lady on the thigh, and he approached her and bent over and noticed her fresh ice pack and said, “Still cheering for me? . . . Got everything you need? . . . I’m sorry about that.”

Then as the wind butted in after spending the whole week somewhere else, he settled in for some pars and for the shocking sight of Stricker, unglued. Stricker’s tee shot on No. 7 sailed right and dunked itself and his first two tee shots on No. 10 went out of bounds right and right into water.

“Once it got out into the middle there, the wind just ripped it right to the right,” Stricker said. “And that one hurt the most.”

Somehow, an elite player with one bogey in the first 78 holes made a triple-bogey seven and a quadruple-bogey eight within the next four. Those haunting ingredients of a startling 77 left Perez leading with Merrick suddenly nibbling.

The Long Beach Wilson graduate Merrick, a heady sixth in the 2008 U.S. Open, began eight shots behind Stricker and zoomed from 25 under to 31 under until his seven-foot par putt on No. 17 slipped just by. He wouldn’t yield decisively to the Torrey Pines High graduate, Perez, until No. 18, when Merrick’s second shot from a flawless fairway hooked into the water.

Exhilarating? Frustrating? “It’s both,” Merrick said, but seemed more focused upon the former as he cheerfully complied when some new fans chased him down to pose for photos.

His highest finish in three years on tour became second place rather than first when, moments later, Perez stood in the fairway, water howling on the left all the way up to the green. “I don’t lay up,” Perez said. “I don’t lay up. I hit a six-iron. I mean, How hard is it? It’s downwind.”

So he hit it up there to three feet, and he started walking, and his father thought about “the first time he took an eight-iron from me at Candlewood Golf Club in Phoenix” at age 5, and the son walked right into the next phase of his life, the one with the phrase “yet to win on tour” newly dead.

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chuck.culpepper@yahoo.com