Even Perez admits, it's about time to be a TOUR winner

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After wrapping up his first PGA TOUR victory Sunday, Pat Perez was congratulated by tournanment host Arnold Palmer.

LA QUINTA, Calif. -- From the time he came on the PGA TOUR as a talented and temperamental rookie, Pat Perez heard people tell him he had to change his ways.

"You know T.A. (Tommy Armour III). He would say, 'Kid, you gotta relax. Kid, you've gotta quit doing this and you gotta quit doing this,'" Perez said Sunday. "But Tommy's right. A lot of things he's right on."

Maybe after seven years of hearing people on TOUR, people who were rooting for him to succeed, maybe now Perez is starting to understand the advice. On the day Perez won his first TOUR event in 198 starts at the 50th Bob Hope Classic hosted by Arnold Palmer, the words used to describe him on the day were not hot-headed or volcano. Instead, the words were hard work, marriage and relieved.

"I was thinking it's about time. It's been seven years, it's about time," Perez said of his walk up the 18th hole of the Palmer Private Course at PGA West.

It was a walk in front of family and friends from across the country who had come to see Perez take one of his best shots at winning a golf tournament. Starting the fifth and final round three strokes behind Steve Stricker, Perez managed a 69 in the swirling 30-mph winds that sent the normally steady Stricker to a 77.

Perez, who eagled the last hole with a three-foot putt, controlled not only his golf ball in the winds but also his famed temper. When his tee shot on the par-3 fifth hole hit rocks and then jumped back into a lake on the way to a double bogey, it would have been an opportunity for Perez to melt down.

But he didn't. Describing the moment as just "a speed bump," Perez managed to complete the front nine in 35, then stayed steady as he outdueled Merrick in the win and the tight quarters of the Palmer Course's back nine.

The elusive first win doesn't come as much of a surprise, Perez said, because he worked harder this offseason than at any time in his career. Much of that work came at The Madison Club, an exclusive facility in the southern California desert just five minutes from PGA West.

"I usually just screw around and play and have some drinks or whatever, but this time it was serious," Perez said. "I got to a point in my career, seven years now, that I was just tired of being average. I was tired of being nobody. I know that I can play and I want to play."

It's not the Perez had failed as a pro, but he had never been in the top 40 on the money list and was better known for things like a famous televised club-slamming meltdown in the 2002 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am or for beating Tiger Woods back in 1993 at the Junior World Championships.

"If I have to answer one more Pebble Beach question after this," Perez said, half-joking. "I mean, it's up to you guys (the media). I hope you guys will drop it."

Sure, Perez has benefitted from a new swing, rounder and shallower than his old steep, high swing. But it might be the change in his approach to the game and life in general that produced Sunday's win.

In the offseason, he was married to girlfriend Athena. With that half of his life in order, he can now work on fulfilling the promise of his junior days without the high drama of his temper taking over at the wrong moment.

"I just got tired of getting upset all the time," Perez said. "It's a lot of energy. I see how, I learned from how the best guys do it -- how Tiger (Woods) does it, Phil (Mickelson) does it, Vijay (Singh) , (David) Toms, Zach Johnson, Ernie (Els), all these guys are pretty even-keeled. They don't let things bother them. They put stuff behind them."

Now Perez can put 197 winless starts behind him. In front of him awaits a whole new life as a PGA TOUR winner.