Paul Casey would not have been overly concerned when he was feeling groggy on the eve of last week’s DP World Tour Championship. In truth, he almost might have seen it as a good sign because when he won the Dubai Desert Classic in January, he had woken on the Wednesday morning of the pro-am not having the first idea where he was and feeling shattered to boot.
“What that taught me,” Casey said last Wednesday, “is that energy can sometimes come from another source. At that point, though we were under lockdown with COVID-19 and not allowed to leave our hotel rooms, we had about 500 to 800 spectators and I can honestly say that my energy that week came from them. We hadn’t played in front of anyone for months and what a difference it made to feel their interest and support.”
That Casey, at 43, is playing as well as he ever has is probably because he never has stopped learning. Bernhard Langer, though he may not have known it, was one of his early tutors. Indeed, long before Langer became a seemingly immovable object on the senior tour, Casey would study how the 1985 and 1993 Masters champion approached every aspect of his play on the PGA Tour.
“I’m a lot easier on myself. I just kind of let stuff go more quickly than I would have done in the past.”
Paul Casey
After he had finished second alongside Dustin Johnson behind Collin Morikawa in the US PGA Championship at Harding Park in August 2020, Casey had delved deeper into the learning process while throwing in a delightful, “I’m still growing up.”
“I’ve always liked learning from the guys I play with and against, and the better they are, the better the things I pick up,” Casey said at the Rolex-sponsored interview in Dubai.
Johnson, who is as cool as they come, is one to whom he gave a mention, Scotland’s Bob MacIntyre another: “Bob’s got a good demeanour and he’s got a great attitude … he’s only going to get better and better.”
Morikawa, who won that PGA by a single shot – “He beat me, I didn’t lose,” said Casey – is another to have made a huge impression on him, and started to do so long before he hit the headlines by winning his debuts in both the PGA and the Open Championship.
“I’ve been ’round the block a fair bit and I think I can fairly claim to know talent when I see it,” said the Englishman. “Collin’s maturity has always shone through. He’s mature in the words he chooses, the way he speaks and the way he plays.”
Last week in Dubai, the local reporters asked Casey to pass on some of his accrued wisdom to those playing on the UAE amateur scene. After explaining that he did not know the scene well enough to have tabs on the players’ options, he delivered the kind of warning which he would have heard umpteen times in the days when his father had a role with the old English Golf Union.
“There are thousands of kids who try to make it in golf but fail, so education is so important,” said Casey. “Maybe they end up in business and golf remains a great tool for them, but the underlying thing for me has always been about taking opportunities, whether that’s a job opportunity, college golf or professional golf.”
Casey was an outstanding amateur who, apart from winning three Pac-10 championships as a collegian at Arizona State University, bagged two English Amateur titles and won full points in the winning Walker Cup side of 1999. That he and Luke Donald, who is today a fellow Rolex testimonee, won both their Walker Cup foursomes, made them an obvious eventual pairing for the WGC World Cup, which they won in 2004.
Where Donald, in his hey-day when he rose to world No 1, was as precise as any Rolex when it came to his iron play, Casey hastily admitted that precision was not his forte, and that it is only recently that he has become fully aware of what makes him tick. It is about the right mix of golf and life.
“I’m a lot easier on myself,” he said. “I just kind of let stuff go more quickly than I would have done in the past.”
It was back in 2001 – precisely 20 years ago – that Casey won the Gleneagles Scottish PGA championship and, as a reward, went out and bought himself a watch made by his sponsor, which originally was designed for pilots and which he treasures to this day. Last week, at the request of the local media, he showed off the timepiece presented to all the players by captain Pádraig Harrington ahead of this year’s Ryder Cup – subject matter which perhaps was rather more suitable for someone who was feeling groggy than a look-back at Europe’s defeat.
Harrington, a great man for facts and figures, had added an extra touch to the watches by having the figure at which the new owner came in on the list of 164 players to have represented Europe on the back. Casey, who first played in 2004, was 130th on that list to Harrington’s 131st.
“Pádraig explained to us how well that 164 figure sat against the fact that about 580 people have been into space and 5,870 people had climbed Everest,” Casey said. “As he said, it’s a startlingly small number of players.”
Casey, no less than Harrington, has an enquiring mind. Where many among his peers do not find out what is going on with the game’s politics until they see how things are affecting them, he keeps up with the news. What is more, the fact that he never minds giving an opinion has been a boon for the media during a pandemic in which they seldom have had great access to players.
Yet Casey would never, for a moment, want people to think that he is all about golf. The balance he talked about earlier has a lot to do with his personal life. After advancing the rhetorical question, “What is success?” he opted for “a happy and healthy family and a great group of friends”
Top: Paul Casey is still soaring with finishes of T2, T4 and T7 in three majors at age 43.
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