July 18th, 2008
Paul Casey is handling expectations
There is a corner of Atlanta airport that is forever England. At least it is on the Monday after the Masters when everyone gathers to catch the overnight BA flight back to Heathrow. Had you been there last April you would have seen Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the Royal & Ancient golf club talking to David Harrison, captain of the R & A. You would have heard Sam Torrance cracking jokes with Ken Brown and Peter Alliss.
Just as the queue to board the plane had almost disappeared, Paul Casey appeared, looking slightly unfamiliar. You have become so used to seeing him wearing a short-sleeved shirt and peaked cap that when he is hatless and a jacket is covering his stevedore’s arms, you do a double take.
At the Masters, Casey had been one of the six British golfers who held a share of the lead at some point. Indeed, with 18 holes to play, Casey was one of four men to be ahead of 32-year-old Woods - three of whom were younger: Casey, 30, Trevor Immelman, 28, the South African who would go on to become the Masters champion, and Brandt Snedeker, 29, the American. That Casey fell away from being in fourth position on Saturday night to finish joint 11th does not detract from the viewpoint that he is a member of the current crop of British golfers, one of whom is expected to win a major championship soon.
Will it be Casey, who was ranked 34th in the world on the eve of the Masters, Luke Donald who was 16th, Justin Rose who was 9th? Or might it be Nick Dougherty, who was ranked 53rd or Ian Poulter, 24th? Eight years after the day when there was only one Englishman ranked in the world’s top 100, there were nine, a contingent only bettered by America and Australia.
“Do I think the public have a right to be expectant (of us)?” Casey muses. “I think they do. The golfers I watched growing up were Faldo, Lyle, Seve, Langer and Woosie. How many major championships did they win? I think we have the talent to replicate that sort of era. We are not there yet. We don’t have the results. But the potential is there. Peter Kostis, my coach, has said to me: ‘I’ll be disappointed if you don’t have more than one major when you’re done.’ If I take a day off I think to myself, I didn’t accomplish something today. I lost ground.”
“My goals have shifted now. I don’t like to share them but they are lofty. I feel a sense of urgency because I am 30 and greying. I haven’t spent two or three years dawdling around. I am highly motivated and ready to go now.”
Casey was in good form for most of 2007, lasting four rounds in all four major championships and having a 66 at the start of the US Open in June. But then something went wrong in mid-August and his good form disappeared. “I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was trying to achieve in the latter half of the season,” Casey says. “My goals have shifted now. I don’t like to share them but they are lofty. I feel a sense of urgency because I am 30 and greying. I am highly motivated and ready to go.”
Casey has a team helping him attempt to achieve his goals. Damon Shelton is his trainer, working on Casey’s mobility, suppleness and strength. At 5ft 10in, Casey weighs a solid 82.5kg, yet appears to be without an ounce of excess flesh. He has a physique that resembles Tony Jacklin’s: working man’s shoulders above a long back and short legs and powerful forearms.
Also in Team Casey are Peter Kostis, the portly American golf commentator who has been Casey’s coach since the Englishman arrived at Arizona State University on a scholarship 12 years ago; caddie Craig Connelly and Dr Don Greene, a sports psychologist.
Kostis, as Casey calls him, provides the technical analysis and also the rewards when goals are achieved. “Kostis has an excellent wine cellar. It is eclectic but predominantly red. He is a master at picking the best value wine from a wine list. If I achieve my goals he rewards me by letting me choose a bottle of wine. I drink a lot of sparkling water. I haven’t had a coke in months, Jos (girlfriend Jocelyn) is vegetarian as well.”
Greene is as important to Casey as Kostis. It was Green to whom Casey turned when he went into a dramatic downward spiral in mid 2005, losing his way mentally and physically. From being a man approaching the end of his tether, Casey bounced back, thanks, in part, to Greene. Little more than one year later Casey had won the World Match Play championship at Wentworth by a record margin and holed in one at the Ryder Cup, where he was unbeaten in foursomes, four balls and singles.
“This is a great time to be a professional golfer,” Casey says. “We are playing in the Tiger Woods era and it could turn out to be the best ever. Golf is at the forefront of the minds of sports fans. Tiger brings people to the game, people who aren’t necessarily golfers. That is exciting. The purses are huge. We get looked after very, very well and most of that is down to him. I know him, get to talk to him on and off the course. He is a great guy. I am inside the ropes with him and see the hoopla that surrounds him. He deals with it extremely well. He is a great person. I call him Tiger and he calls me ‘PC’. He is a gentleman to play with on a course. You hit a good golf shot and he tells you ‘great shot’”.
At Oakland Hills in the 2004 Ryder Cup a slightly off-form Casey played Woods in the Sunday singles. “Was I nervous? Yes. Was I worried about making contact with the ball? Yes. But you deal with it. That is why we do everything we do to get into situations like that. The situations may not be enjoyable at the time. They may be stressful and tough physically if it is hot. The Ryder Cup is 36 holes each day but you walk off the course or wake up the next morning and go, ‘You know what? That was great’.”
So this is Paul Alexander Casey, a gifted and distinctive golfer who is also a singular man, self-confident with a touch of arrogance, polite without being obsequious. Casey asks questions as well as answers them, reads more widely than many golfers. In Abu Dhabi where I saw him, he was carrying a copy of Greene’s book ‘Fight the Fear and Win’. He also had Ralph Steadman’s ‘The Joke’s Over’. The stories of the antics of Steadman and the madcap Hunter S. Thompson bring a smile to Casey’s face.
Casey seems at ease with his mid-Atlantic status: an Englishman who walks through the door of his house in Arizona and immediately feels at home, even though he was born in Cheltenham, grew up in Surrey and keeps a flat in Esher. This is the man who lives with his American girlfriend seven miles from a shop in Scottsdale, Arizona, and says: “I am desperate to win the Open. English player, English man. I want the Open. To my mind nothing is better than a claret jug.”
Casey’s 31st birthday falls on the Monday after this year’s Open. No prizes for guessing what he wants for a birthday present.