By Larry Dorman, The New York Times
SAN DIEGO - Not many players on the PGA Tour sport a boxing glove head cover on their driver. There are an odd assortment of animal head covers, like lions (John Daly, Ernie Els) and tigers (Tiger Woods) and bears (Jack Nicklaus), oh my. But a boxing glove?
Pat Perez captured the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic two weeks ago after seven winless years on the PGA Tour.
Pat Perez is the only golfer on tour who has that symbol of a hardscrabble sport jutting out of his golf bag, like a cactus in a rose garden. His choice of head covers fits him the way a linen cap fit Ben Hogan.
It is appropriate because, less than a month from his 33rd birthday, Perez has finally punched his way into the winner's club. Two weeks ago at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, he slew all the old demons that once held him back -- self-doubt, perfectionism, a quick temper and nerves down the stretch -- and shot 33 under par to win his first tour event.
On Wednesday at Torrey Pines Golf Course, on the eve of the Buick Invitational, Perez sat in a spot not far from where he once picked up range balls while in high school and talked about what it was like to finally raise his hand in victory after seven winless years on tour.
"It was a lot of things," he said, smiling and leaning back in a wing-backed leather chair in the media tent. "It was relief, it was excitement, it was, You did it and you proved yourself."
Even though Perez has been labeled a natural since his Little League baseball and junior golf days in San Diego, days when he beat a youngster named Tiger Woods, nothing has ever come easily to him. His family was not poor, but he was no country-club kid. To be able to play and practice, he earned his way.
"I did it all," he recalled last June, after battling through a qualifier just to get a spot in the United States Open here. "I cleaned the carts, put away the carts, picked up balls, picked up balls on the outside of the range, picked up baskets, set up the balls in the ball shed. Sometimes I took money. I did it all. Any outside job I had. I was the gofer."
Back in the familiar surroundings of Torrey Pines as a tournament winner Wednesday, Perez still seemed to relish the recollections from those days when he would do anything at all just for the joy of playing golf.
"I remember when the range was over here," he said. "The range was here where the Hilton is. You had to drive over, and it was a terrible range, and go back. Yeah. We used to park - Jake, my buddy, was the starter - and we used to pull in and then just go right to the tee."
He gestured toward the opening in the tent, pointing west, and continued: "Say we're here, and go out to the tee. Then from 18 we’d go right to the car and leave. It was kind of a secret parking spot that nobody knew about. I remember what this place looked like forever."
Just three years after winning the 1993 world junior title, eight strokes clear of Woods, Perez played on Arizona State’s N.C.A.A. championship team. He won early in 2000, his rookie season on the Nationwide Tour, and appeared well on his way to stardom on the PGA Tour during his rookie season two years later, when he had the lead during the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach.
But it was not going to be that easy. Perez's four-stroke lead evaporated on a windy day at Pebble, and his composure melted right along with it. He slammed his driver into the ground at one point, repeatedly pounding it into the turf like a man flailing at a log with an ax. The images have followed him since, but he buried them in the desert two weeks ago.
"I don’t think people realized how tough it was that day, blowing off the ocean 50 miles an hour," he said after his win at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. "And I hadn’t been used to that. I only played Pebble when it was perfect, and it was a completely different course. But I wasn’t really ready to be thrown in that situation where I had to hit great shots and contend with the best in the world."
Now he is. His recent marriage has had a calming effect on his on-course demeanor. His work that began last year with the swing coach Mike Abbott has flattened his swing, making his ball-striking more solid with the driver and irons. It has been a fight to get where he is. Perez wants to keep punching away so he does not go backward.
"The thing that drives me the most is to never be where I was," he said. "I think that’s why I'm so critical and hard all the time, because I always want to move forward."
Pat Perez caught fire down the stretch Friday afternoon at Riviera. Sitting at -2 on the day, Perez bogeyed #14 and reeled in another par on #15 before going on a tournament-changing tear with three straight birdies.
