Kenny Perry Puts Golf in Rearview Mirror
A member of four Presidents Cup teams trades in clubs for cars in retirement years
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A collector of vintage muscle cars, Kenny Perry is quite at peace with leaving golf in the rearview mirror.
Perry, 62, quietly retired from professional golf in November 2021 with a four-decade career that approaches Hall of Fame status with 14 PGA Tour wins, four Champions Tour majors, four Presidents Cup appearances and two Ryder Cup teams, including winning on his home soil of Kentucky.
Coming from humble beginnings where he had to borrow money for one final shot at PGA Tour Qualifying School, Perry won 11 times in his 40s, and in the year before he turned 50, he finished at No. 5 on the PGA Tour money list.
Perry also won a whopping $32 million, putting him on the short list of best players to never win a major championship.
“That’s OK, at least I’m something,” Perry says with his big smile and even bigger personality that made him one of golf’s endearing figures. “I guess everybody gravitated toward me because I was just a simple guy. What you saw was what you got.”
While some in pro sports have a difficult time trading their respective game for more leisure time, Perry, who has always been full on candor, is quite the opposite.
He quit golf cold turkey.
“I’ve only played only six times since I retired — six rounds, that’s it,” Perry says. “I quit, I completely quit. I don’t really play golf anymore.
“I don’t want to post a number. Everybody calls and asks if I want to go play and I say ‘Nope, I have no interest.’ I don’t have any desire; I don’t want to play; I don’t want to hit a ball. I just don’t want to do it. I’ve done it my whole life; I gave my whole life to it.”
Perry isn’t bitter, far from it. He loves the game of golf, watching it and hanging out with 13-year-old Rowdy Harris, one of his nine grandchildren. Two weeks ago, Perry drove seven hours from Kentucky to Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte to offer support as the teenager toiled in a regional portion of the Drive, Chip & Putt competition.
Perry also owns Country Creek Golf Course in his hometown of Franklin, Kentucky, where he sometimes works the counter.
“It was very easy for me to walk away from golf,” Perry says. “Physically, I hurt now. I have a hip that bothers me; I’ve had two knee surgeries, a shoulder surgery — all from golf. I’m just worn out — and mentally exhausted, too.
“I’m tired of people judging me by the person I am with what I shoot on the golf course. I just want to watch. I am a huge fan and I don’t know what’s going on with this LIV thing. Hey, $100 million is $100 million. That’s life changing, that’s generational. You can’t blame them for taking the money. But I hate that it broke the Tour up and all the good players aren’t going to play against each other.”
Perry was at the site of this week’s Presidents Cup a few weekends ago, but was just as excited to discuss his love for muscle cars and drag racing. He recently sold a 1955 Chevy for $135,000.
“It was immaculate,” says Perry, who recorded an 8-9 record in the Presidents Cup. “I spent a lot of time working on that car. I just love to restore cars.”
Perry has about 20 vintage cars in his stable, having built two 40-by-100 foot buildings and another area with two lifts behind the house where he and his wife have lived since 1987.
“They all call it the concrete compound,” he jokes.
Twice Perry suffered playoff losses in majors, with the 2009 Masters as the one that got away. He held a two-shot lead with two holes to play, but bogeyed the final two holes and then lost in a three-man playoff to Ángel Cabrera.
“On 16, I hit it to six inches for birdie,” Perry says. “I tapped it in and I looked over at the scoreboard and I immediately said to myself, ‘Hummm, I’m two up with two to play. My whole thought process all week was this saying of being ‘aggressively patient.’ And all of the sudden I said to myself ‘if you make two pars you win the Masters.’ It hit me. All of a sudden I went from being aggressive to tentative.
“It’s funny how your mind changes. I went from being in the moment — I had it, I was sharp — to all of a sudden saying ‘all I have to do is make two pars.’ It just changed my whole world — the way I was thinking, the way I was feeling. Shoot, I was 2 up with two to play. I gave it away, I just choked.”
However, Perry doesn’t reflect negatively on that day, instead focuses on the positive.
“That was some of the greatest golf I’ve ever played,” he says. “Winning the Masters wouldn’t have changed my life. I think about it some and it would have been awesome. I could have taken my kids and grandkids and gone to the Masters and play. To me, I would have loved to have taken my dad. But it didn’t happen, it wasn’t meant to be.”
Win or lose, Perry is still living life large and savoring every moment out of the spotlight.
“I had a guy come up to me recently and told me he just enjoyed the person I was,” Perry says. “When you go to your grave that’s all you take with you, you take your name and not a green jacket. It’s OK, I’ll get one in heaven.”
Kenny Perry, what a great guy. Truely a man of character and integrity and not a "class act". With Kenny it was all real, not an act!