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Tonight Lyon County junior Travis Perry will be in Rupp Arena for Big Blue Madness along with numerous other Kentucky recruiting targets and commits.
Perry has a scholarship offer from coach John Calipari along with offers from Michigan, Purdue, Bradley, Cincinnati, Creighton, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, New Orleans, Ohio State, Mississippi, Stanford, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest.
However, he was also a state first round golf qualifier this season after placing fourth in the regional tournament. Perry and three other Lyon basketball teammates were on the golf team — three of them having been playing together since second grade.
“Getting to go out and play and compete in a different way against different guys at region and state was really fun,” the 6-2 guard said. “There was still a lot of basketball talk on the course because people want to talk about basketball.”
“But it was fun to play golf. If I hit a bad shot, I could just laugh it off.”
Perry said expectations others had for him when the golf season started were not very high. He joked he would post a score, go into the clubhouse and be told his 5- or 6-over par score was good when others were shooting under par.
“But I did have some good scores. Golf is not something I have dedicated a ton of time to recently even though I played when I was young and was pretty gifted,” he said.
He played golf “all the time” until he was about 12 years old. He won several Kentucky state tournaments and current LPGA tour player Emma Talley of nearby Princeton — a three-time Kentucky state high school champion — took him with her to see Todd Trimble, her instructor.
“She wanted him to evaluate my game,” Perry said. “He said you will make the (PGA) tour but you have to dedicate yourself to golf. I went home, put my clubs up and did not play again until the middle of COVID.”
Why put the clubs up after being told he had the talent to perhaps make the PGA Tour?
“I just couldn’t give up basketball,” Perry said. “When I finally started playing golf again, I had to go out and get clubs. I think I could have done well in golf but I made the right decision.”
Dan Talley, Emma’s father, is one of Perry’s biggest fans and even gave him some of his daughter’s clubs — hybrids and a putter.
“Part of qualifying for the state I owe to Emma Talley because I used her hybrid some and her putter every hole,” he said. “Hopefully she was happy about that.”
