Ok guys final play this week..
Couples -115 over Perry
When he returned to Augusta National this week, he moved back into the same house he rented last year, and his family was to arrive Wednesday, just like a year ago. But those are the only similarities to last year when he came so close to becoming, at 48, the oldest Masters champion.
"It was a great opportunity I let get away," he said. "I'm not near the player this year that I was last year."
Perry's problems began in January at the SBS Championship in Hawaii. Minutes before going to the first tee he broke his putter, the one he had used so effectively in three victories in '08 and two last year.
"My son was with me," he said, "and I told him then this was a bad sign for this year."
Perry tied for sixth in Hawaii, but that's the only top-10 finish he has had in six starts. He even missed the cut in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last month. He's a former champion at Bay Hill, and in '08 and '09 he missed just two cuts in 48 starts, going 24-for-24 last year.
"I've got swing problems, too," he said. "I'm hitting blocked shots and pulled shots. I'm really hitting some bad shots."
It's never good going into a major with swing flaws, but it's especially troubling at Augusta National where the fairways are so uneven that any little slip will lead to an errant shot, and an errant shot leads to high scores.
"I hit some shots (on Monday) that I just had to laugh about," he said.
"Last year my game was completely different. I was confident in my putting. I was confident in my swing. Now, nothing seems to be going well."
Perry has long struggled with putting, but four years ago a friend gave him an old Ping putter that proved to be the solution to his problem. When he broke the shaft, just hitting a warm-up putt, he was concerned, but he thought it could be repaired.
"I sent it back to Ping and they must have put two or three shafts in it, but it has never looked the same," he said. "The face always looks closed to me. They must have sent me 10 more putters, but none of them look like the original."
