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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, July 14, 2005

Perry's return to local golf scene is a success

By Bill Kwon

Despite a long layoff from competitive golf, Harold Perry shot 68 and 73 to capture the Aloha Section PGA Senior Club Pro Championship at Mauna Lani\'s North Course on Monday.

Gregory Yamamoto | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Blaine Kimura's first tournament victory came in the Oahu Country Club Men\'s Invitational last week.

With all the talented young golfers taking center stage these days, let's hear it for the old guys.

Ladies, too, especially Bev Kim, 59, caught sneaking in a practice round at the Pearl Country Club the other day in preparation for next week's Waialae Women's Invitational which she has won in five different decades.

We were reminded, with a couple of oldie-but-goodie performances, that there's more to local golf than the youngsters currently showcasing their talents on the Mainland:

  • Harold Perry, 53, won the Aloha Section PGA Senior Club Pro Championship Monday at Mauna Lani's North Course.

  • Blaine Kimura, 35, proved it's never too late as he won his first tournament, the Oahu Country Club Men's Invitational, last week. Not bad for a guy who never played golf until two years after he graduated from the University of Hawai'i in 1992.

    Over the years, he was the "other Kimura" in local amateur tournaments. Paul Kimura, no relation, is more known of the two.

    "One of these years, I'm going to win a tournament so you can write about me," Blaine Kimura told me kiddingly earlier this year.

    "You do that and I will," I replied.

    Well, he made good on his promise, so I'm keeping mine.

    Kimura, vice president of a computer consulting firm, ran track and cross country at McKinley High School. Despite being a good buddy of Mark Takahama, who played on the UH golf team, Kimura was never interested in golf.

    When he interned at IBM he was told that playing golf was good for making business contacts.

    "I took my first golf lesson from Kiyoko Sieradzki, who had some friends at IBM," Kimura recalled.

    He now enters the majority of the amateur events and has come close to winning a couple of times. But he never had been able to put together consistent rounds. So winning in wire-to-wire fashion was doubly satisfying for him.


    BACK IN THE SWING

    In contrast to Kimura, Perry started golfing at an early age while growing up in Guam where his dad, Harold Perry Sr., a former McKinley High football star, worked. Perry soon became one of the bright stars in the Hawai'i Junior Golf Association.

    A 1969 Kamehameha Schools graduate, Perry competed in several USGA tournaments nationally and later represented the University of Hawai'i in the 1971 NCAA Championship in Tucson, Ariz.

    He won the 1970 Manoa Cup as a freshman on the UH golf team and the 1973 Barbers Point Open, which then included professionals, and also the Hilo Open and the Kaua'i Open that same year. Perry captured the JAL Rainbow Open in 2004, in one of his first tournaments after turning pro.

    He left the islands in 1976 and, before now, returned only once in all that time to play in the 1986 United Airlines Hawaiian Open.

    "My deal was to play on the PGA Tour," said Perry, who moved to Myrtle Beach, S.C., but is back to take care of personal matters following the death of his mother, Hilda, last December.

    His wife of 25 years, nee Terry Bednarski, a former LPGA Tour member, and their two daughters, Tai and Megan, still reside on the Mainland. A University of Tennessee graduate who lives in Chicago, Tai was once ranked 12th in the nation by the AJGA as a 10-year-old. Megan plays soccer at Clemson.

    Perry was a club pro at several golf courses, including one he once owned in North Carolina.

    In the interim, Perry is working for Hilton Hawaiian Village, selling time shares. But as a life member of the PGA of America for more than 20 years, he was eligible to compete in the club pro championship and won medalist honors for the national club pro championship at Port St. Lucie, Fla., Oct. 20 to 23.

    Perry didn't enter Tuesday's qualifying, also at Mauna Lani, for the U.S. Senior Open later this month because he couldn't take more time off from work. "I'm committed to Hilton," he said.

    "I'll probably play one or two more (local) tournaments and see what happens," said Perry, whose game didn't reflect a lengthy layoff from competitive golf. He shot a bogey-free 68 in the first round and a 73 the following day despite hitting only seven of 18 greens in regulation.

    "I hadn't been in that position in a long time," added Perry, who's looking forward to playing in the national event and seeing some old familiar faces again.

    As for the new faces locally, Perry says that there's a lot of talented young golfers in the islands.

    "But to get better, they've got to play on the Mainland. It's a different mentality up there. There are bigger thinkers up there. The mental and intimidation factors are stronger and local kids need to face that," he said.

    He's all for what Michelle Wie is doing.

    "You only go through life once. Let her go, let her do what she wants. She's got such a strong mental game. I read once where she said, 'I don't want to be normal.'

    "Whoa! That's something. That's the kind of thinking you have to have, if you want to be better."