MORGANTOWN, W.Virginia – Senior of West Virginia University Logan Perkins is one of five Mountaineer golfers competing in this year’s Big 12 Golf Championship, which begins today at Whispering Pines Golf Club in Trinity, Texas.
Perkins is also one of three climbers ranked 104th in the PGA TOUR University Top 125.
The Locust Grove, Georgia resident recently said he was a baseball player until he transferred schools around the age of 13. The father of one of the boys he hung out with at his new school owned the local golf course.
“I started hanging out with them and started playing golf,” says Perkins. “I was horrible and for about a year they just destroyed me and I was sick of it so I practiced literally every day. Then I got good at it and I was like, ‘I think I like this better than baseball. ‘”
He became one of Georgia’s top junior golfers and eventually earned a scholarship to play at WVU.
Perkins says he learned pretty quickly what he needed to do to become a consistent collegiate golfer.
“Back to my official visit, Coach (Sean Covich) showed me the van, and he said, ‘If you don’t make the lineup, this van will leave the lot without you, so you better do what you have to do to make the drive.’ I told him the van wouldn’t leave without me, even though I had no idea what collegiate golf was at the time,” Perkins recalled.
“I was pretty good at junior golf in Georgia and when I come in I’m like, ‘No problem, I’ll get my place.’ I don’t know what I shot in the first qualifier but it wasn’t good and I probably finished eighth or ninth out of nine or ten guys we had back then and I looked at some of the older guys in the team lineup ask, ‘What did these guys do to get a spot in the lineup?’”
What Perkins quickly discovered was that they were always in tune, while sometimes he wasn’t.
“It might not be super low every time, but it’s spot on and everything is in play,” he says. “They don’t get into much trouble on the course and know where to miss and what to do at the right time.
“So I quickly learned from that and decided that that’s where I was going with my game – hitting a lot of fairways, trying to hit a lot of greens and on the days when I’m putting well and chipping well, I’m going to have a really good one Have a number,” he explains. “On the days when I’m not scoring really well, I’m going to rely on my short game.
“I’ve always been a pretty good wedge player and I would say that’s what sets me apart. As I get closer to the greens, I’ve been able to save a lot of pars in situations that were probably big for the team coming out on the course in tournaments or Big 12 matchplay,” he adds.
As Perkins puts the finishing touches to his collegiate career, he said he’s accomplished almost everything he set out to achieve as a collegiate golfer.
“I haven’t won any tournaments, but I’ve played a lot of really good tournaments,” he says. “Every year I’ve had the opportunity to go to all these events and show what I’ve got. It went by pretty quickly but the teams we had and some of the guys I got to meet and play with made it a pretty good journey. I probably wouldn’t want to spend it anywhere else.”
Perkins and his Mountaineer teammates are paired with Iowa State in the opening round of the Big 12 championships this morning. The game will be played until Wednesday.
This week’s Climbing Life was produced by Sean Merinar and is presented by WVU Medicine.
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