Pat Perez learns playing through pain not as good an option as surgery

Pat Perez now knows he made a mistake at the start of last season. His left shoulder was bothering him, and had since the previous August, but he decided to go ahead and try to see if he could play through it and get off to a good start.

The plan didn’t work.

He played in 11 events in the 2015-16 season and missed the cut in seven of them, including six of the last eight. By last February, he realized it was time to quit, and he had surgery for a torn labrum in March.

That plan worked better than even he could have imagined.

Perez, who began playing the PGA Tour full time in 2002 after earning his card in qualifying school, is having the best season of his career. And after a birdie-birdie finish on Nos. 17 and 18 at Riviera Country Club on Saturday, he sits one shot behind Dustin Johnson after two rounds in the Genesis Open.

“I probably never should have started the season last year, but I’m very stubborn,” Perez said after his five-under-par 66 put him at nine under.

“But it was a learning experience, and in the end it worked out in my favor.”

Perez, who grew up at Torrey Pines, is tied for second with Cameron Tringale, a 29-year-old from Laguna Niguel looking for his first Tour victory.

When Tringale dunked an 82-yard wedge directly into the cup for a birdie on No. 18, he completed a seven-under 64 that was two shots lower than any other second-round score.

Perez, 40, rejoined the Tour in on a major medical extension in late October; to retain his card, he needed to earn 420 FedExCup points or $670,050 in 15 events.

Turns out, he did that very quickly.

After seven months away from the game, he returned in the CIMB Classic and tied for 33rd, finished tied for seventh in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, and in November won the OHL Classic at Mayakoba, his first tournament victory since the Bob Hope Classic in 2009, his only other tour win.

With a tie for third in the SBS Tournament of Champions and tie for fourth at the Farmers Insurance Open — a tournament he thinks of as a fifth major — he has earned a career-high $2.2 million and stands fourth in FedExCup points with 907.

“I had as much time as I wanted to come back,” Perez said. “I was actually really encouraged when I could hit balls for the first time and it didn’t hurt. That’s why I was excited.” That was five months after the surgery.

He has shortened his swing a little and is trying to simply keep the ball in play, even though he knows he can’t hit it nearly as far as many players on tour. He’ll be playing the final 36 holes today with Tringale and Johnson, but he’ll be focusing on his game, not theirs or anyone else’s.

“The holes are hard enough,” he said. “I don’t need to worry about what anybody else is doing....

“Tomorrow with Dustin, he’ll hit it 50 yards by me like usual, and that’s actually easy for me because I don’t have to worry about trying to keep up with him. I know his game real well ... I know my game even better.”

sports@latimes.com