diff -up tornado-4.4.2/setup.py.cert tornado-4.4.2/setup.py
--- tornado-4.4.2/setup.py.cert	2016-09-30 16:43:58.000000000 -0600
+++ tornado-4.4.2/setup.py	2016-10-02 19:55:25.645685022 -0600
@@ -133,10 +133,6 @@ if setuptools is not None:
         install_requires.append('backports.ssl_match_hostname')
     if sys.version_info < (3, 4):
         install_requires.append('singledispatch')
-        # Certifi is also optional on 2.7.9+, although making our dependencies
-        # conditional on micro version numbers seems like a bad idea
-        # until we have more declarative metadata.
-        install_requires.append('certifi')
     if sys.version_info < (3, 5):
         install_requires.append('backports_abc>=0.4')
     kwargs['install_requires'] = install_requires
diff -up tornado-4.4.2/tornado/simple_httpclient.py.cert tornado-4.4.2/tornado/simple_httpclient.py
--- tornado-4.4.2/tornado/simple_httpclient.py.cert	2016-09-30 16:41:19.000000000 -0600
+++ tornado-4.4.2/tornado/simple_httpclient.py	2016-10-02 19:55:25.646685029 -0600
@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env python
 from __future__ import absolute_import, division, print_function, with_statement
 
 from tornado.escape import utf8, _unicode
@@ -34,17 +33,8 @@ except ImportError:
     # ssl is not available on Google App Engine.
     ssl = None
 
-try:
-    import certifi
-except ImportError:
-    certifi = None
-
-
 def _default_ca_certs():
-    if certifi is None:
-        raise Exception("The 'certifi' package is required to use https "
-                        "in simple_httpclient")
-    return certifi.where()
+    return '/etc/pki/tls/cert.pem'
 
 
 class SimpleAsyncHTTPClient(AsyncHTTPClient):