Of the 18,000 members of the PGA, just 20 participate each year in the PGA Championship. But Rod Perry, a Mississippi State graduate and the head pro at Crane Lakes Golf and Country Club in Port Orange, Fla., has earned his way into the championship a remarkable six times. Even more remarkable, all six berths in the PGA Championships have come since 2012, when he turned 38 years old.
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LYING FOUR: Do you make it back to Mississippi much?
ROD PERRY: I don’t, man. It’s so out of the way. I’m never just driving through. If it was near Atlanta or Charlotte, then sure — I find myself in those cities quite often. But I don’t find myself in north Mississippi very much.
LYING FOUR: Have you not had a chance to play Mossy Oak, then?
ROD PERRY: No, I haven’t.
LYING FOUR: Oh man, it’s ridiculous. You’ve gotta get up there.
ROD PERRY: I try to get up there. We’ve had some good football seasons, obviously. I just haven’t made it back out.
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LYING FOUR: So this is your sixth PGA Championship? That’s kind of ridiculous.
ROD PERRY: It just means I’m old, man. It doesn't mean I’m good, I’m just old. I think I’ve played in 13 National Club Pros now, so obviously the years are kind of coming and going, but what is that — about a 50 percent qualification rate?
LYING FOUR: That’s pretty good, man.
ROD PERRY: Yeah, it’s not bad. Obviously the last couple of years have been my best. I finished second in 2012, and that kind of kickstarted things.
LYING FOUR: Did you just kind of find something in your late 30s?
ROD PERRY: I was a good player in high school, but I wasn’t great. I’d average even par, maybe one or two over. I was the oldest of four boys, and my dad didn’t play golf. My grandfather got me into it. And the acronym “AJGA” was foreign to me. I knew nothing about junior golf. I knew nothing about national junior golf rankings when I was in high school. I just didn’t have anyone that had gone through that junior golf regimen to know how to get a golf scholarship and play in college. I tried to walk on at the University of North Florida, which had just won back-to-back NAIA national championships, but the coach at that time wasn’t too keen to walk-on players. And I got a job at a club there in Jacksonville where I was going to school, and came to idolize the golf pro there — a guy named Tim Mervosh. And I just thought Tim was the coolest guy. And I thought, “Y’know, if I’ve gotta work the rest of my life, then I wanna do what you do.” Everybody liked him. All the sales reps that came and went held him in high regard. Everyone at the club did. I realized at that time that I wanted to make golf my career. Mississippi State was the closest PGM program, and there wasn’t really anything keeping me at North Florida — there wasn’t anything there that I wanted to study. So I transferred out to Mississippi State.
LYING FOUR: So what is your day like usually at Crane Lakes, and how does that change when you’re getting ready for the PGA?
ROD PERRY: Crane Lakes is a small club. We’ve got about 175 members, and they contribute about half of our 33,000 rounds per year. So we’re playing the daily-fee and membership games, running a private club for the members while also trying to attract outside play to offset the reduced membership fees. It’s tough. But being a small club, I have to wear a lot of different hats: overseeing the merchandising aspect of things; I still teach about 300 lessons a year; we do two to four clinics a week; and we’ve got a thriving junior program. Even though it’s a 55-and-over community, having two young kids in the school system, I think having an active junior program is really important. So we do that too.
LYING FOUR: What about when you’re getting ready for the PGA? How does your day-to-day routine change — or does it?
ROD PERRY: Unfortunately my routine doesn’t really change. As we speak, I’m sitting here trying to organize matches and get an e-mail out to our PGA Junior League parents. I’ll try to play and practice a few times this week, but I’m kind of fortunate that last week was a full week of playing there at the Club Pro, and that it was close to the PGA Championship. I’m just trying to maintain now.
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LYING FOUR: You always hear about the PGA Championship’s historical roots, and what a big deal it is to PGA professionals. Is that still true?
ROD PERRY: Yeah, it really is. It’s the biggest tournament that our association runs. Of the four majors, we’ve got the PGA Championship being run by the PGA of America, which is our association — it’s the association of working-class golf pros that are in the trenches, serving members, selling tee times, merchandising, teaching, running junior golf programs, doing so many things that golf pros do. And to have the opportunity to step out of that daily routine and get a chance to play in one of the four biggest tournaments in the world in any given year is really important. To have a chance to play against the biggest names in golf — sure, this is my sixth opportunity, but we don’t get that opportunity very often.
LYING FOUR: So what’s the difference in atmosphere between the PGA Championship and, say, the PGA Pro?
ROD PERRY: Obviously the National Club Pro is a fantastic event. The PGA of America does a fantastic job with Club Car, Mercedes, and the other corporate sponsors, trying to make all 312 of us in that field feel really important. They pick fantastic venues, just like we had at Belfair. They put up gallery ropes, and they’ve got starters; we had 650 volunteers there through the Belfair membership. They really make it feel very similar to any one of the Tour events that I’ve played in the past. And then we’re gonna kick things up a notch and go to the PGA Championship, where the atmosphere is electric — especially on the heels of what Tiger did at the Masters. Golf is the center stage of the sporting world that week. I know we’ve got NBA playoffs going, and Major League Baseball is starting to heat up a little bit — but Thursday through Sunday, golf takes center stage.
LYING FOUR: You’ve done this enough now that it’s not new anymore, but do you still get butterflies going out there on Thursday morning?
ROD PERRY: Sure, I get butterflies every time I play golf! It’s important to me, right? You’ve got a chance to do something really special. I think what makes it especially important for me at this point in my life is that I’ve got kids who are 11 and 8, and I understand how much it means to them to see me do well. And also, I’ve got 175 members here at the club, and all of this east-central Florida community, that are aware I’m playing this event. Certainly you hope that you don’t disappoint anyone and that you make a good showing.
LYING FOUR: Do your kids go up with you?
ROD PERRY: They have in the past, but it’s an odd time now. When it was August and they were out of school, then yeah, absolutely they came to the Club Professional Championships and they came to the PGA Championships. But my daughter’s in standardized testing, so it’s really tough for them to get away. And seeing as it’s up in New York, they won’t be making the trip this year, but I know they’ll be watching intensely.
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LYING FOUR: How are the Tour pros to be around at this thing? Are they chatty?
ROD PERRY: They’re great guys. They really are. They understand that 20 of us have earned the right to play in this one event, and I think they all look at us and — obviously, we’re not Tour players, although some of us have had great opportunities to play on Tour, but they all want to see us do well. And for one event, I think it’s OK.
LYING FOUR: Have you played at Bethpage before?
ROD PERRY: I never have. I really haven’t played that much golf in New York. I know the National Club Pro was at Turning Stone a few years ago, but that was in upstate New York. Although I’m originally from the Philadelphia area, I just haven’t had a chance to play much. In fact, I’ve never played golf out on Long Island at all.
LYING FOUR: I played there about a year and a half ago, and I know you’re not there to have fun, but it’s so much fun. It’s a kick in the pants, but it’s so much fun.
ROD PERRY: Truly I am there to have fun. I’m fortunate that I work for a great club with great ownership and a fantastic membership. We have a great staff here at Crane Lakes who can handle things while I’m gone. So I’m there to enjoy myself, man. I’m there to have fun, take it all in, and enjoy things. I’m blessed to have a steady job, and a good client base that takes lessons from me, so I’m not relying on this as my sole income source. Hopefully I play well, and if I’m fortunate enough to make the cut and play the weekend, then that’ll be great; if not, then that’s OK too.
LYING FOUR: How do you game plan in a situation like this, where you haven’t seen the course but you probably know a lot about it just because it’s on TV so often?
ROD PERRY: I’ve got a good caddie on the bag, the guy who caddied for me at the Club Pro. It’s just golf, man; 150 yards at Bethpage in New York is the same as 150 yards in Port Orange, Florida. Luckily my game is such that I don’t drive it exceptionally far, and knowing my carry distance off the tee and picking out some good landing areas — obviously any bit of local knowledge will help. But I think game planning for the longer hitters, who are prone to take chances off the tee with different driving lines, becomes a little more difficult. I’m kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum: I hit it straight, day in and day out, so I don’t have to worry about what’s on the sides of every hole. I just look down the middle and hope I can get some playable clubs in my hand.
LYING FOUR: Do you have any favorite stories — anything you think of when you think of the PGA Championship?
ROD PERRY: Yeah, but I don’t think my wife wants me to retell it too many times.
LYING FOUR: Well now you’ve gotta tell it.
ROD PERRY: My first PGA Championship was at Kiawah Island up in South Carolina. At the time — this was in 2012 — we had a newborn, so I pulled up to the front gates at Kiawah in a 1999 Toyota 4Runner with about 210,000 miles on it. And it was kind of temperamental, and it would stall on occasion. We got assigned Mercedes-Benz S550 courtesy cars that week. And I did not know that I could let my wife take the courtesy car. I thought this was a player’s courtesy car, and that they only wanted the players driving it. So unfortunately, I stuck my wife and my two kids in the temperamental Toyota 4Runner, and I drove away in the $100,000 Mercedes.
LYING FOUR: I can understand why that would be a sore point.
ROD PERRY: I played a practice round with Sergio Garcia that week, and on the ninth hole, we made a $5 bet about whether he could out-drive me with my driver: I hit his, and he hit mine. And he hit mine out there; he hit mine maybe 200 yards left-handed, because I’m left-handed and he’s right-handed. So I said, “OK Sergio, let me see yours.” And I teed up Sergio’s driver, but I knew enough to turn it upside-down and just swing it left-handed. So I hit it past him and he paid me five bucks.