'George W. Bush wrote me a letter'

Kenny Perry's Masters postmortem took place Tuesday in New Orleans, where he is preparing to play in the Zurich Classic, his first tournament since Augusta. He was predictably candid about his performance there, particularly the final two holes of regulation that ultimately proved to be his undoing, and he spoke at length about the outpouring of support he has received.

"Greg Norman called me. Phil Mickelson called me. Scott Hoch called me. George W. Bush wrote me a letter," he said. "It was just incredible the outpouring of support. I had so many people just, you know, proud of the way I handled the loss."

On the final holes: "Here I am for four days, you know, for hour upon hour, just playing beautiful golf. And then it all boils down to one little chip shot on the 71st hole. You know, I had it all all the way up to the last half hour of the tournament..When I got two up with two to play, my thought was, all right, two pars and you win the Masters. Well, to me, I hadn't been playing like that all week. To me I was playing, let's hit it here, put it on this part of the green, get an uphill putt here for birdie.

"I was playing, I guess you could say conservatively aggressive, if there is such a word. And I was playing great golf. When I knew I had to make two pars, I got defensive. To me that was probably the biggest thing. Instead of being aggressive, I started to hang on. And that's the worst thing to do in golf. When you you try to hang on on, bad things start happening."

The transcript of the interview is here.

-- John Strege