Carson Perry, local 12-year-old golfer, heading to Augusta National ... with three clubs

PORT ORANGE — Carson Perry has been practicing his putting on the floor at home. No big deal, you might think; a lot of golfers do that.

Except Carson isn’t practicing on a hallway carpet.

“I go home and practice on the tile,” he says. “We have a putting mat, but for this I’ve been practicing on the tile.”

“This,” by the way, is the ninth annual Drive, Chip and Putt competition at Augusta National, Sunday morning, on the official eve of Masters week.

Carson, 12-year-son of longtime area pro Rod Perry, made it through three qualifiers to become one of 10 boys in the 12-13 age group — and one of 80 juniors overall in four age groups for boys and girls.

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Excited?

“Yeah,” Carson says.

Nervous?

“Not really.”

With good reason.

“I’ve told him, he’s already won,” says dad Rod, an accomplished PGA of America golfer who’s head pro at Crane Lakes in Port Orange.

“The goal of this whole thing is to make it to Augusta. He gets to take his mom, his sister, me, his grandparents. He’s already won.”

The Drive, Chip and Putt, with its 2014 debut, immediately became a popular event among competitors and their families (of course) but also many of the professional golfers already on Augusta National property in preparation for the coming week’s major championship.

The age divisions for both boys and girls are 7-9, 10-11, 12-13 and 14-15. In the national finals, each golfer hits two drives, with the longest of the two counting for the score; two chips, with cumulative distance counted for scoring; and the same with two putts, one from 15 feet, another from 30, on Augusta’s 18th green.

Carson, a lefty like his dad, plans to depend on his 9-degree TSR Titleist driver, likely his 56-degree TaylorMade wedge, and Scotty Cameron putter.

“I’m practicing all of them,” he says. “They’re all pretty solid right now.”

Carson, a sixth-grader at Creekside Middle in Port Orange, carries a handicap index of 7.5. He averages about 220 yards off the tee, with dependable accuracy, but being in the lower half of that 12-13 age group, he expects to see some older kids hit it past him.

But things should equal out on the chipping and putting greens.

“His chipping is phenomenal,” Rod says. “He’s got great hands around the green, and he’s a pretty good putter too.”

Still, the putting surfaces of Augusta National are very demanding and unforgiving of the slightest flinch.

“Obviously, he’s never seen a green like that,” Rod says. “Oceanside is probably the fastest greens around here,and he’s putted up there a few times, but for him to be on 18 at Augusta, putting downhill …. Obviously, when you’re nervous, you don’t feel your hands very much.

“Our tile is probably the closest thing we can find for him to practice on.”

After success at the local and sub-regional qualifiers, Rod Perry came a fraction of an inch from getting a two-for-one deal at this year’s Drive, Chip and Putt. At the Bears Club in Jupiter, where Carson qualified in the regional finals, his sister Vanessa, a freshman at Spruce Creek, was runner-up in the 14-15 division by just two points.

She won both the driving and putting competition, but lost a bunch of points due to one bad chip (of three), which she caught heavy.

“Any points whatsoever chipping, it would’ve changed the whole outcome dramatically,” says Rod, the 2012 PGA of America national “Club Pro” champ and a two-time national player of the year.

Carson Perry won’t be the only golfer competing for the first time at Augusta National this coming week. But he might be the first — or at least one of very few — doing so just 10 years removed from first learning the game with a plastic club.

“I think I was 2, or around when I could first walk maybe,” he says while sitting alongside Crane Lakes’ practice tee. “I took a plastic club out here and just whacked it around. Just kept doing it and kept on doing it and practicing.”

And about a decade later, he’s going between the ropes and competing on one of the grandest stages in sports.

“Being there will be amazing,” he says. “I”m excited for it.”

Dad Rod has competed at golf’s highest level — he’s qualified for seven PGA Championships — and while he’s already chalked up the whole the experience as a victory, he hopes Sunday will be more of a stepping stone than a final destination for his son.

“I’m not nervous as far as the result,” Rod says. “I obviously care about him as my son. Rather good or bad, I hope it builds his confidence and helps further his golf game. I think he’ll be able to handle it.”

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Junior Carson Perry ready for Augusta National's Drive, Chip and Putt