Pat Perez wore a button-down shirt to the LIV Golf pro-am party on Tuesday night in North Plains, Oregon, that was so garish, so outrageous that only the words of that renowned wordsmith Phil Mickelson would do it justice: it was obnoxiously something, that is for sure.
Greedy? Well, the shirt featured a motif of $100 bills, which was only fitting since Perez sold out for the Benjamins. It was meant as quite the super flex – imagine his friends and fellow LIV defectors telling him, ‘well played,’ and yucking it up, maybe his wife tabbed it “iconic” as she labeled the Saudi-backed league in her bizarre Tik Tok post. But the shirt only showed his lack of respect for the PGA Tour, his place of work since 2002, which gave him a platform to earn more than $28 million in career earnings. However, Perez in his money shirt would make a fitting personal logo or better yet a perfect representation for all of LIV Golf.
It’s sad that we’ve reached the point in this charade where Perez is being praised for being one of the only LIV players to admit that he made the leap for the money. He went so far as to literally wear it proudly rather than hide behind the lark of ‘growing the game,’ or so many of the other sham justifications.
“This opportunity has been like winning the lottery for me,” he said.
Perez , to his credit, has managed to keep his card all these years despite just three PGA Tour wins, sometimes just squeaking inside the top 125. He was marking time until PGA Tour Champions at age 50 when thanks to the help of Dustin Johnson he was handed a lifeline – and reportedly some $20 million in guaranteed money – to jump ship to LIV Golf. Hardly anyone is going to miss him.
When Rory McIlroy mentioned that some of the LIV players were duplicitous, he had others first and foremost in mind, but Perez has to be first-team All-duplicitous after his rant against Mickelson and all things Saudi golf at the Genesis Invitational in February, which is really worth a full read but here are some select excerpts.
“I would never say anything bad about the Tour because I’ve had an unbelievable life doing it, and I still have the Champ Tour to think about it. I’m exempt on the Champions Tour for as long as I want to play. That’s an unbelievable type of retirement thing on top of the retirement package that we have already. I’ve got no reason to bitch about anything. I’m kind of one of those lucky guys that I think I see it the right way,” he said.
“For me to make roughly $40 million total with everything of a guy that got kicked out of college, that whole thing and was supposed to be a garbage man, really. For me, yeah, I’ve earned every penny of it because we have to do it all the time,” he said.
That was followed up by another all-time takedown of Mickelson during a podcast appearance in early March on Golf Subpar with Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz, which Golfweek detailed here.
But Perez did warn us in February that he was susceptible to flip. “You throw me a hundred and I actually get it, I’m gone,” he said. “I would take it. Why wouldn’t you?”
All Greg Norman had to do was show him the money. Apparently, his price was a lot less than a hundred – or was he referring to just one Benji?
World Golf Hall of Famer and Fred Couples, speaking to Golf.com, so far is the most outspoken player to call out Mickelson, Perez and the rest of the duplicitous. He delivered some choice words specially for Perez.
“I heard of all people Perez was a little confrontational,” Couples said of the press conference ahead of Perez’s LIV debut this week in Oregon. “He’s a grain of sand in this Tour. He should be soft and kind, but he’s, like, raising his voice. I’m done with it.”
Couples saved his best for Mickelson:
“Have you ever seen Phil look so stupid in his life? They know it’s a joke,” and added, “I don’t think I’ll ever to talk to him again.”
In other words, go pound sand.