TULSA, Okla. – Mito Pereira took a unique route to the top of the PGA Championship's leaderboard. The 54-hole leader at Southern Hills once quit the game for two years and broke his collarbone in a bike accident. He was competing on the Korn Ferry Tour this time last year and is making just his 28th start on the PGA TOUR. He also is an Olympian and narrowly missed out on a bronze medal.
Here's Five Things to Know about the man who will take a three-shot lead into the final round of the PGA Championship:
1. THREE’S COMPANY
Pereira earned his first PGA TOUR card by winning three times on the Korn Ferry Tour during the extended 2020-21 season, becoming the 12th player to earn a three-win promotion from that circuit and the first since 2016. His first win came at the Country Club de Bogota in February 2020. Sixteen months later, he won back-to-back starts to graduate to the PGA TOUR. In those last two events, he was 48 under par and had a 65.1 scoring average. His highest score in that span was 67.
“This is crazy, man,” Pereira said after the win. “This is by far the best thing that I've done in my life. … It's been a long ride. There's been tough moments, good moments, but it's all worth it.”
It didn’t take him long to have success on the PGA TOUR. He had back-to-back top-6 finishes in July before finishing fourth at the Olympics, falling in the seven-man playoff for the bronze medal.
2. STANDING ROOM
Pereira entered this week ranked 46th in the FedExCup and 100th in the world ranking. A third-place finish in the season-opening Fortinet Championship is his lone top-10 of the season. He entered the week with four consecutive top-30 finishes in individual tournaments, though, including a T17 at last week’s AT&T Byron Nelson. The stats show that ballstriking is Pereira’s strength, which is paying off this week.
He's fourth this season in greens in regulation (71.4%), 13th in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (+0.67) and 30th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (+0.45). He ranks outside the top 100 in both Strokes Gained metrics that measure short-game performance (Putting and Around-the-Green), however.
He’s also 16th in the standings for this year’s International Presidents Cup team.
3. PHENOM-ENAL
Pereira was something of a junior phenom in his native Chile. He was runner-up in the boys 10-11 division of the 2006 Optimist International Junior Golf Championship and won the 12-13 division two years later (Beau Hossler finished third, one stroke back). Pereira enrolled at the prestigious IMG Academy in Florida when he was 14 but was burnt out after six months and quit the game for two years. When he decided to start playing again, he quickly picked up where he left off, however.
“I took the two years off but when I came back I knew I could do it, I knew I could get to here,” he said Friday, “and I just kept the confidence, and obviously there were some up and downs but (I’m) really happy to be here.”
He won on the Chilean Professional Tour when he was 17 and embarked for Lubbock, Texas, to play one season at Texas Tech, reaching as high as No. 5 in the world amateur world ranking before turning pro in 2015 after his freshman season. The Big 12 Championship was played at Southern Hills for Pereira’s lone season with the Red Raiders. He finished eighth, nine shots back of winner Scottie Scheffler.
Pereira finished third on the PGA TOUR Latinoamerica Order of Merit in 2016, racking up a win and three-other top-3 finishes, to earn Korn Ferry Tour status. He finished a solid 76th on the Korn Ferry Tour money list the next year before losing his card in 2018. He returned to Latinoamerica for one season before making it back to the KFT.
4. RISING STARS
Pereira is the third Chilean to earn a PGA TOUR card, after Benjamin Alvarado and Joaquin Niemann. Pereira and Niemann, 23, have been friends since they were kids. They used to practice together daily and shared a coach, Eduardo Miguel, who still coaches both of them. Pereira also resided in Niemann’s South Florida home after the COVID-19 pandemic made international travel impossible, and had his Korn Ferry Tour trophies sent to Niemann’s home.
Niemann was known in their younger days for wearing a lot of yellow. “He looked like a bee,” said Pereira. Niemann also looked up to the older Pereira.
“We all grew up together,” said Carlos Bustos, another Chilean who played college golf at Florida. “Mito was always better because he was older than us. He was on another level at that age, when we were like 13, 14, I mean he was an unbelievable golfer.”
Niemann went on to become the No. 1 amateur in the world before winning twice on the PGA TOUR. He and Pereira were teammates at last year’s Olympics and now look to team together again at this year’s Presidents Cup.
5. ADRENALINE JUNKIE
Pereira is known as a bit of an adrenaline junkie, which could help him cope with the stress of a major championship. He’s a fan of motocross and MotoGP (Grand Prix motorcycle racing).
After enduring a difficult season on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2018, Pereira broke his collarbone when he fell off his bike that fall. The injury may have been a blessing in disguise.
“Obviously in that moment it was terrible,” he said. “But if I look back, it probably helped me a little bit. It was a month that I didn’t play. I cooled down and took all the bad things out.”
He also discovered a mental coach, Eugenio Lisama, who works with Formula 1 racers and soccer players. Pereira says working with sensors on his brain and analyzing the data was “like going to the gym for your brain.”
“He showed me some data of those guys and it’s unbelievable,” Pereira said about the athletes who engage their brain much quicker than he does playing golf. “But we all need our minds to be blank. That’s what he teaches and trains with me on.”
Five Things to Know: PGA Championship leader Mito Pereira - PGA TOUR
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