Perry, 49, was playing in the group in front of the 16-year-old amateur Jordan Spieth, whose gallery was gargantuan. Figuring the roar could only be for the hometown headliner, Perry asked Spieth what he had done at No. 1.
“He said, ‘I just holed it out of the bunker,’ ” Perry said. “He said it just like that, real casually.”
The winds that bent the flagsticks at the Byron Nelson Championship might as well have been a breath of fresh air heralding the arrival of Spieth, the reigning United States Junior Amateur champion, who carded a three-under-par 67 that rocketed him up the leader board.
His 54-hole total of six-under 204 left him tied for seventh, six shots behind the leader, Jason Day. Day, who fired a 67, takes a two-stroke lead over Blake Adams into the final round.
Spieth is one shot behind a group of three in fourth that included his 50-year-old playing partner, Tom Pernice Jr., and Perry, who said, “I’ve got underwear older than him.”
Pernice, the oldest player in the field, and Spieth, the youngest, made the oddest of partners. “We got a chuckle right off the bat about that,” Pernice said.
Spieth said he was not sure how to address his playing partner “because he has a daughter that’s my age and I don’t call my friends’ parents by their first name, so I was kind of going back and forth.”
He added, “It was like playing a round with your dad, a little more talented golfer than my dad, but, you know.”
Once during the round, Spieth referred to Pernice, who posted a 66, as Mr. Pernice, to which Pernice said he replied, “Tom’s fine.”
Asked what they talked about during the round, Pernice, who has daughters ages 15 and 16, said with a laugh: “It’s like with my 16-year-old daughter. What do you talk about? It’s tough.”
The talk going in was how the tournament had dimmed since the death in 2006 of Byron Nelson, its genial host. This year’s event had no Tiger Woods, no Phil Mickelson and no buzz until Spieth blew in.
“He’s really fired up the whole Dallas metro area and I think it’s wonderful,” Pernice said, adding, “It proves you don’t always need the biggest and best names to have an exciting and a great week.”
The tournament, in a nod to Spieth, announced Saturday that anybody 16 or younger would gain free admittance to the final round.
Before this week, Spieth, who has been wearing a Texas Longhorns baseball cap, considered it a given that he would attend college before turning pro. And now?
“It is hard because you realize that you can compete out here and make a lot of money out here,” he said. “I think right now if it ended right now, it would be a pretty big check. I stick by where I am right now, and I think that I need to learn and grow as a person and learn to control distractions and that kind of stuff better, and I think college is the place to do that.”
WIE IS ELIMINATED Top-ranked Jiyai Shin knocked out Michelle Wie in the Sybase Match Play Championship quarterfinals, winning by 2 and 1 on another hot, humid day at hilly Hamilton Farm in Gladstone, N.J.
Shin will play Sun Young Yoo — a 2-and-1 winner over fourth-seeded Yani Tseng — in the semifinals Sunday morning. In the other quarterfinals, 10th-seeded Angela Stanford beat Catriona Matthew, 5 and 3, and No. 30 Amy Yang edged Haeji Kang, 1-up. (AP)
WOOD LEADS IN ENGLAND Chris Wood of England shot a four-under 67 to take a two-shot lead over Robert Karlsson of Sweden, who had a course-record 62 in the third round of the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship in Wentworth, England. Karlsson was at six-under 207, despite a quick turnaround from his home in Monaco after he thought he had missed the cut. (AP)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/sports/golf/23pga.html?ref=sports
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