Perry, Pernice share Champions Tour lead

SCOTTSDALE,ARIZ.>> Kenny Perry and Tom Pernice Jr. shared the lead Saturday in the Champions Tour’s season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship, taking advantage of Jay Haas’ third-round collapse in difficult conditions at Desert Mountain.

Perry shot a 2-under 68, and Pernice had a 70 to finish at 8-under 202 on the Cochise Course.

“Just a battle out there,” Perry said. “Greens are so hard, you really can’t control with the wind and altitude and the greens where you cannot fly the ball, you have to play everything 20, 30 feet short, bounce it up. With some of those pin placements, very tricky. I feel like I’m at a U.S. Open. It’s very hard to fit the ball near the holes so that’s why you see nobody really running away with it.”

The 60-year-old Haas, four strokes ahead after opening with rounds of 66 and 62 to break the tour record for consecutive rounds of par or better at 38, had a 75 to fall a shot behind.

“I wasn’t sharp, obviously, and it was a tough day weather-wise,” Haas said. “The wind was blowing a little bit harder coming from a different direction. I was just off just a little bit and that showed.”

Haas, the oldest player in the field limited to the top 30 on the money list, had a double bogey, six bogeys and three birdies. He hit a female spectator with a shot en route to a bogey on the par-5 eight.

“I felt awful, obviously,” Haas said. “I understand that she’s doing OK, but you know, if you’ve done it, you know what it feels like. It’s not a good feeling when she’s laying there bleeding and everything. ... If I had been sharp, I would have hit the fairway there and not bothered her. So it’s probably her first and last time she’s ever been to a golf tournament.”

Haas won two weeks ago in North Carolina to become the 18th player to win a Champions Tour event at 60 or older. He has 17 victories on the 50-and-over tour after winning nine times on the PGA Tour.