Bunkie Perkins is a pseudonym. But Bunkie Perkins is so much more than a pseudonym: Shreveport, Louisiana’s favorite son, Raising Cane’s most vocal defender, Twitter’s premiere Houston Nutt historian, a frequent guest on various podcasts, and a proud resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma — which unexpectedly became the 2022 PGA Championship’s host city when the PGA of America stripped Trump Bedminster of the tournament in January. The event will be Southern Hills’ first major since the 2007 PGA Championship, and will allow Southern Hills to showcase Gil Hanse’s recent renovation work — and, with the tournament scheduled for May instead of July, also allow the now-middle aged Bunkie Perkins a greater chance of avoiding heatstroke.
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LYING FOUR: Let’s get to the most important question first. Who is Oklahoma’s greatest pro wrestler?
BUNKIE PERKINS: Well, the easy answer is “Dr. Death” Steve Williams. We walked similar paths, the Doctor and I. At some point, he was living in Shreveport — which, of course, is my hometown. And I remember seeing him in an Academy Sports one day. At the time, he had blonde hair. The full mane was really going. He had the Toby Keith, where he had really bleach-blonde hair but then the brown face stubble.
LYING FOUR: God, what year would this have been?
BUNKIE PERKINS: It sounds very Eighties, but it had to have been the 2000s. So he was a shell of his former self at this point. That’s the easy answer, the obvious answer. But obviously, Cowboy Bill Watts came from Oklahoma. Of course, he also ran a regional wrestling promotion that also was in Shreveport at one point. But I think those would be the top two. You’ve got a long wrestling history in Oklahoma with Oklahoma State; that’s where the actual National Wrestling Hall of Fame is.
LYING FOUR: I didn’t realize that.
BUNKIE PERKINS: Yeah, that’s kind of a big deal. You’ve got the Brisco Brothers, Gerald and Jack Brisco. They’re old-school.
LYING FOUR: Yeah, that’s strong.
BUNKIE PERKINS: Then you’ve got, of course, Bill Goldberg. I don’t think people really attach him to Oklahoma, because he played football at the University of Georgia, but he is from Oklahoma. He was born in Tulsa. He went to Edison High, which is kind of in central Tulsa.
LYING FOUR: Yeah I saw his name on a list a couple of days ago, but I have never associated Goldberg with Oklahoma. This is a complete shock to me.
BUNKIE PERKINS: And his high school, Edison, is not synonymous with great football players. Obviously you’ve got Union High, Broken Arrow, Bixby, even Booker T. Washington. So, Bill Goldberg. And the other two good ones would be Wahoo McDaniel —
LYING FOUR: He gets my vote.
BUNKIE PERKINS: He’s from Bernice, Oklahoma. I don’t even know where Bernice is. And then a sleeper pick: Mae Young is from Sand Springs, which is right outside of Tulsa. So Tulsa is an unknown hotbed of WWE and WWF legends. The roster is a little deeper than you’d expect.
LYING FOUR: That’s amazing. When I get out there for the PGA Championship, I’ll have to check out the wrestling hall of fame.
BUNKIE PERKINS: Well that’s in Stillwater, so you’re talking about an hour drive, which isn’t bad. If you’re into like, actual Olympic-style wrestling, right now Oklahoma State has two guys who are called the Ferrari Brothers. I have tweeted about them before. Think of the most Italian-looking guys from Texas that you’ve ever seen, and those are the Ferrari Brothers. They’re apparently very good amateur wrestlers, but they’re also ridiculous-looking. They’re amazing.
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LYING FOUR: Whence comes your affinity for Raising Cane’s? Is it just having spent so much time in Shreveport?
BUNKIE PERKINS: Yeah, it’s the Louisiana upbringing. They’re a Louisiana company, and I remember going to the first Raising Cane’s, which is in Baton Rouge.
LYING FOUR: I just Googled “raising canes shreveport,” and there are six Raising Cane’s locations in Shreveport. That seems like overkill.
BUNKIE PERKINS: No, you’ve got to hit all of the areas. You don’t want to drive too far without having accessibility to chicken. The crazy thing is that I think there might only be one Chick-fil-A in the city, which is crazy. But yeah, I like Cane’s. I know some people say it’s not overly seasoned, which is a fair argument. But if you’re on a diet, but you kinda want chicken fingers, Cane’s is a good spot because they’re not overly salted. A good little dad trick for you.
LYING FOUR: How long have you been in Oklahoma now?
BUNKIE PERKINS: I think we’re going on eight years. It’s been a while. I don’t consider myself an Oklahoman now. Unfortunately my daughter was born here, and my soon-to-be-born second daughter will be born here. I still consider myself to be a visitor. But yeah, I have a little bit of working knowledge.
LYING FOUR: You’re a citizen of the world, man.
BUNKIE PERKINS: Well, the world — some of the less desirable places in the southeastern United States.
LYING FOUR: How’d you wind up in Tulsa?
BUNKIE PERKINS: Work. My wife is from northwest Arkansas, from Fayetteville. And I got transferred here for work about eight years ago, and we’ve just kind of never left. I know people think I just work on Twitter, but I actually have a real job. I work in the oil industry — which is a tough scene at the moment. And my wife has started a business that’s turned out to be fairly successful, so I think we’re probably here for the long haul.
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LYING FOUR: How’s the public golf out there?
BUNKIE PERKINS: It’s not bad. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. When I first moved here, my office was kind of in the center of town. When you come for the PGA, you’ll see that Tulsa is a very easily navigated city — the reason being that it’s all on a grid. So the numbers go sequentially north and south, and then you’ve got east and west. My office was at 61st and Yale, and right across the street from my office was a public golf course called LaFortune. It’s a great little golf course. It’s one of those where you can go out there and get in 18 holes in less than three hours. It’s not terribly difficult, but it’s a fun little track. Plus, one of the underrated parts of it is that they have an 18-hole, par-3 course under lights, and it stays open until midnight. So you can go out there, drink beer, and play the par-3 course all you want.
LYING FOUR: Is that just because it gets so hot during the day that they’ve got to keep it open at night?
BUNKIE PERKINS: For sure, during the summer. The only time I play golf during July in Tulsa is very early — like, getting the earliest tee time, or if I can go out late at night. But even then — at 6 o’clock, it’s still 100 degrees. Growing up in the South, you know how it is from about mid-June to mid-September: unless you can get those preferred times, it’s a brutal ask.
LYING FOUR: Whenever I’m in a city with a really famous private club, I always like to look for public courses nearby — ostensibly because you might get some similar terrain, but really it’s just to peeping-tom the famous course as I drive by. Are you familiar with Page Belcher Golf Course?
BUNKIE PERKINS: Boy, I am. Yes I am.
LYING FOUR: Tell me about that place.
BUNKIE PERKINS: It’s a rough scene. It has 36 holes, so it has a lot of golf. And it actually has a pretty decent private golf course nearby called Oaks Country Club. Buddy, that one’s a rough scene. You’re gonna see guys in jeans. You’re gonna see guys taking clubs out there that probably haven’t been hit in 40 years. If you want to get some golf in, there are worse places — there’s an even worse place that is south of town called South Lakes. It’s actually on the Jenks side of the Arkansas River, so it’s not actually in Tulsa. It’s near an airport. It’s rough. In fact, recently some guy went out there and shot some absurd number, something in the 50s. Page Belcher, South Lakes — kind of a rough scene. Like you said, you’d think that the terrain would be similar; I mean, LaFortune is literally 10 blocks away from Southern Hills. But the terrain is completely different.
LYING FOUR: And you’ve played Southern Hills a couple of times, right?
BUNKIE PERKINS: Yes, I’m fortunate to have some buddies who are members out there, and every once in a while I can sneak on with them. I’ve played it since the redesign. Of course it was originally a Perry Maxwell, and Gil Hanse came in there and kind of re-did everything. This is a very basic description of what he did, but he restored all the original bunkers that were lost, and then moved the championship tee boxes back — like, way back. But then for the member tees, they’re not the traditional raised tee boxes; they flow into the fairway. It’s just kind of a neat, old-school way to lay that out. Then they took some trees out. It’s super-neat. And I think — so, you want to talk about how they’re going to make it difficult for professionals? So, I went in 2007 to the PGA — which may have been, by the way, the hottest two days I’ve ever spent on God’s Earth. It was in July. That’s for real.
LYING FOUR: Tremendous decision-making from the PGA there.
BUNKIE PERKINS: It was really hot that Saturday and Sunday. I was very fortunate in that I had a buddy who was a member, and so we could do the whole go-watch-a-hole-and-then-go-back-in-the-clubhouse-and-drink-a-beer, and then go do it again. That was the only means of survival that week. And at the same time, John Daly is out there smoking heaters, and he was on the leaderboard until the last day. But he’s up there smoking cigarettes, drinking Diet Cokes, weighing his heftiest, and completely melting. So it’ll be better now that it’s in the spring. It won’t be as hot, and the weather will be fairly enjoyable. I think what they’ll do to make it more difficult for professionals, or what they should do, is grow up the rough — it’s Bermuda and super-hard anyway, but if they grow it up then it’s just gonna be more difficult — and then I hope they narrow the fairways. The thing about Southern Hills is that it’s true to its name: it’s very hilly. Tulsa and Oklahoma in generally you’d think would be flat and windy, but there’s this one little area in Tulsa in the center part of town that is super-hilly. And that’s Southern Hills. There’s not really a flat lie, even in the fairway. You’re going to be hitting off inclines and declines all day. It’s super-hard for me, and that’s what makes it difficult for amateurs like me: even if I’m in the fairway, I probably don’t have an easy shot. I have to think about it. And then the greens are super-hard. They’re super-fast. And if they shave right off the green like they typically do, it’s going to be really hard. The last competitive round that I saw out there was the Big 12 championship in 2018, before the renovation. Just to give you sort of an idea, Southern Hills has typical Perry Maxwell greens, and it’s one of those places where you have to put the ball in the right place on the green, or else you run the risk of literally putting it off the green — which happens to me at least once or twice per round out there. It is what it is. So when I was out there for the Big 12, it was on 18 — and 18 will be neat from a professional standpoint, because a lot of longer hitters won’t even go down the 18th fairway; they’ll take it up the ninth fairway, because the angle is better into the green. This was the year that the Big 12 championship had Hovland, Wolff, all those guys. And I watched them come into 18. The pin was on the lefthand side, and if you put it behind the hole on the right side of the pin and tried to make that putt, you would putt it off the green to the point where your ball would roll 40 yards down the fairway.
LYING FOUR: Sick!
BUNKIE PERKINS: And it’s partially because of the undulations — and when you’re coming in on nine and 18, you’re coming up a hill. But if they cut that grass short, forget about it. I still think, obviously, the professionals are going to score well. It’s not like some crazy U.S. Open setup; it’s a PGA setup. But it’ll be cool to see. I’m excited to go out there after the renovations and see what they can do to that course.
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LYING FOUR: What’s the weather usually like in May?
BUNKIE PERKINS: Awesome. It’s one of the few times when Oklahoma weather is actually enjoyable. The only real issue is that’s kinda tornado season.
LYING FOUR: What could go wrong?
BUNKIE PERKINS: The thing about it is, though — if you look at the whole adage about this being “Tornado Alley” — Tornado Alley has kinda gone south. Tornado Alley is now down I-20, like Dallas, Shreveport, Monroe, and Jackson — whereas, up here, it’s not as bad as it used to be. Now, that could all change. But yeah, that’s the only risk you run: that is kind of tornado season. But as far as heat, it should be fine. The wind won’t be terrible. The bad part of living in Oklahoma is that there are certain times of the year when you step outside and you feel like you’re stepping into a hair dryer, because it’s just 20-mile-per-hour hot wind. It’s just gross. But that time of year won’t be too bad.
LYING FOUR: It’s entirely too early for a prediction, of course, so I need a prediction. Early thoughts on who Southern Hills sets up well for?
BUNKIE PERKINS: I think I tweeted to Tron the other day about the leaderboard back in 2007, and it was crazy. It was John Daly, Geoff Ogilvy, Stephen Ames — it was really a who’s who.
LYING FOUR: I was just looking. I just Googled “john daly 2007 pga championship,” and the first story that comes up is a New York Times story that says the leaders after that first day were Daly, and then right behind him were Westwood and Arron Oberholser, and then Tiger. And then the next result is another New York Times story with the headline, “Daly Shows Field that Practice is Not Necessary.”
BUNKIE PERKINS: Yeah, so the story of that — I think — is that it was so hot, and Southern Hills wouldn’t let him practice in shorts, so he decided to go stay at the Hard Rock Casino in the eastern part of the city. And they have a golf course at the Hard Rock, and it’s one of those where somebody said, “We have this piece of land and we don’t know what to do with it, so let’s build a golf course and get some of our gamblers to stick around for a weekend.” Because it’s not a great golf course. So Daly would go out there, ride around in his golf cart, smoke cigarettes, and then go out to Southern Hills and play. And gamble all night, I’m assuming. Just a legend.
LYING FOUR: Damon Hack, of all people, wrote this article. And he wrote, “When he made par on the 18th hole in a sweat-stained shirt and baggy trousers, Daly had turned in his best score of the year and wondered where the round had come from. ‘I have no idea,’ he said.”
BUNKIE PERKINS: I think that’s a good summation of the second part of that guy’s career. As far as a prediction goes — is Tiger alive in a year? I don’t know. The thing about him winning here last time is that he just ground everybody into dust. It wasn’t a blowout win. He just survived. It was so hot, it was miserably hot. And he just went out there and kind of ground the field down. It’s not one of those golf courses where the long hitters have an advantage; I think the guys who can put it in the fairway and putt well win out here. That’s a long list, I guess. But let’s just go with Brooks Koepka. I know he’s a long hitter, but Brooks is one of those guys who can grind the field down if he’s healthy.
LYING FOUR: He’ll have his shit worked out before then.
BUNKIE PERKINS: Yeah, you would hope so. You would hope that, physically, he’d be OK in a year. And it’s early. The weather won’t be too bad. That would be my pick. But the real winner here is the city of Tulsa, as you well know.
LYING FOUR: Six Raising Cane’s in a city the size of Columbus, Ga., bothers me.
BUNKIE PERKINS: I will say this for the people who are planning a trip to our fair city in a year or so — Tulsa is not a culinary wonder, I’m gonna tell you. It’s a lot of chain restaurants. They love Charleston’s, which I maintain is just fancy Applebee’s. They’ve got a lot of that going on. There’s a good barbecue spot and a couple of good restaurants downtown. It’s not necessarily a wasteland, but buddy, it’s a long way to the water.
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