By Steve Elling
CBSSports.com Senior Writer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The clubhead cover on Pat Perez's driver is a boxing glove, which, despite his reputation as a guy with a short fuse and pugnacious attitude, is apropos of nothing, he insists.
So be it, since in the third round of the Wachovia Championship, he was less the fighter and more of a scrambling cut man.
Hours after Perez made the 36-hole cut on the number, he torched the Quail Hollow Club and threatened the course record before matching the best round of the week with a 7-under 65 on Saturday morning, jumping squarely back into the mix heading into the final round.
In no uncertain terms, he expressed his opinion of the PGA Tour's ever-evolving cut policy, which has twice been revised in 2008 and left plenty of players grousing in both instances.
"The cut rule was ridiculous, stupid," Perez said. "Guys have been bitching about it all year."
Often with good reason, as his scintillating third round underscored. The tour annals are littered with occasional stories of players who caught fire on the weekend to get back in contention after making the cut by the slimmest of margins. Most recently, Chris Couch rallied on the weekend two years ago to win in New Orleans after making the cut on the number.
Perez pointed a finger in his own chest to illustrate the lunacy of the evolving rule. I'm Exhibit A, he said.
"Seven or eight back is nothing," he said. "That could be nine holes."
After starting the day 10 shots off the lead, he'd just cemented that fact with his little black pencil by shooting 30 on the front nine.
Perez was one of 87 players to make the cut Friday night, a staggering number compared to the ideal standard around 70 players and ties. Because of slow play and occasional difficulty finishing in the scheduled television broadcast window, the cut policy was dramatically overhauled in the offseason.
In January, the revision debuted amid a firestorm of criticism. The rule called for the field to be trimmed to the low 70 players and ties, but in the event that more than 78 earned the right to play on the weekend, the number would instead be reduced to those with scores closest to 70th place. In the year's first full-field event in Hawaii, 18 players were sent home who would have played on the weekend a year earlier.
By the ninth week of the season, it had been overhauled again, thanks to near-universal screeching from the rank-and-file players, who felt they were being denied a chance to earn a check. As it currently stands, when 36-hole survivors number more than 78 players, a Saturday cut is used to pare to the number closest to 70 and ties.
Perez had three-jacked the final green of the second round, seemingly to miss the cut by one shot, and fired his putter at his bag, with the club caroming wildly. Perez said he walked into the scoring center and "beat the hell out of a trash can."
Then he got a phone call. The cutline had moved and he was one of 21 players tied at 1-over 145 who earned a late-afternoon reprieve.
"You know, I think it was a stupid rule, and I'm glad they changed it back," he said. "I was telling my buddy Ron last night, you're going to have some guys come out early in the morning and they're going to shoot 6, 7 under and they're going to be right back in the tournament."
Perez was determined to be that guy. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he played ultra-aggressively and birdied six of the first seven holes. When he holed out from 81 yards for an eagle on No. 15, he was within a shot of the lead and 9 under for the day.
Had he not bogeyed the last two holes, he'd have broken the course record. As it was, he tied the front-nine mark with a 30. It was bound to occur sooner or later, with somebody who entered the weekend on the razor's edge. There are too many good players on tour. World No. 5 Adam Scott made the cut on the number and shot 66, also giving himself an outside shot Sunday.
"It does happen," Perez said. "That's the thing, you get lucky, you get out there early, you get out at 7 o'clock, you get some sleep, you've got no wind. Greens are perfect and you can take advantage of it, and I just happened to."
Stewart Cink, a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board, noted that even with 87 players on the course in twosomes Saturday, play seemed to be moving along well enough. But where do you draw the cutline, exactly?
"When I was out there today, I was thinking, why are we having a cut today, because we're playing twosomes," Cink said. "Everybody is going to finish unless there's a rainstorm."
For next year, another storm of sorts is in the pipeline. The tour is considering paring the cut number to 65 players and ties. Whatever number is selected will be unsatisfactory in some camps, of course.
"When they're (bunched) that close together, it's just so hard to come up with a cut at all," Cink said. "If you do the old 10 shot rule like in the past, you're going to have 120 guys make the cut sometimes."
As for the here and now, Perez remains in position to mount wild rallies on a couple of fronts. At No. 58 in the world rankings, he needs to move up eight spots over the next few weeks in order to secure an automatic invitation to the U.S. Open, which will be staged on his home course outside San Diego, Torrey Pines.
"I can take care of a lot of things tomorrow," Perez said.
Thankfully, he'll get the chance to try.
PP stopping by here. Home for a few days and wanted to drop a quick blog on you. Flew in from The Colonial on Sunday night and had some buds come into town for the Iron Maiden show last night.
