PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 8, 2020

Paul Casey

Harding Park Golf Club

Flash Quotes

JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon. Welcome back to the 2020 PGA Championship here at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. We are with Paul Casey, who posted a third-round 68. He is 7-under for the championship. Amongst the leaders you do have the cleanest scorecard, only two bogeys and a double this week. Do you think that type of scoring is going to help you tomorrow?

PAUL CASEY: I hope so. I mean, my game, we spoke earlier this week and the game's not been great, you know, starting off this kind of return to golf. But since Friday of last week, I have my caddie, John McLaren, back on the bag. I've felt good. I got to tweak some equipment a couple of weeks ago at Memorial, different driver.

I feel really, really good about the golf game, so yeah, I've played really well and I think that reflects in the clean scorecards I've been keeping, and I feel really positive going into tomorrow. I feel like I can continue that good play. We'll see what it yields, but I certainly feel I can produce the golf I've been producing up until now.

Q. Did it feel more like a major today?

PAUL CASEY: It's just strange. Honestly, no.

Q. Having been in this situation a lot of times in your career, do you think tomorrow will feel more like a major?

PAUL CASEY: I hope so. You know, it's gone through my mind a few times, I mean, the gravity of the event we're playing in, you know. But it doesn't -- you can't get over the fact it's just you're missing the roars and the excitement and the screaming.

There's no question the golf course is producing that test for us. It's just the other elements which are usually a big part of what we do. You know that.

Q. I've got two for you. The first one being, how much golf did you play during the suspension of play?

PAUL CASEY: I didn't pick up a club for three months, which was quite -- that's quite amazing, really. I then practiced very hard for -- so I developed a nice sense of panic going for the last kind of, I guess -- I gave myself I think -- you'd have to look at it. I started at Travelers and I gave myself, I think, five or six weeks to get ready. I worked out a lot in those first three months. I wasn't, you know, it wasn't -- I wasn't doing nothing.

But worked on myself. Worked on the body and the mind, but yeah, no golf for three months, not a single shot. And then I got playing quite a lot. Playing a lot of games up at Whisper Rock, a couple of money games here and there. I felt pretty ready to come out and play, and I thought I showed some pretty good form at Travelers, so I was ready to go. Like I said, just been a bit flat.

Q. And when and where did you get together with Peter Kostis, and what did he help you find in your game for this week?

PAUL CASEY: Actually I saw Peter a lot when I eventually picked up the golf clubs and dusted them off. He was still in Arizona. He heads to the East Coast for the summertime, so we were together a lot, daily. It's funny, and then so we actually did a lot of fundamental work that we properly -- I wouldn't say put off, I would say we just haven't found the time to do in the last few years, so we went right back to basics for the first two, three weeks. I kind of got out of it a little bit, just habit the last few weeks, and then he talked to me last week, because I was hitting it poorly. Just took a bunch of videos via the phone and sent them through and he reminded me to go back to the fundamentals we were working on back in May or whenever it would have been.

So right now everything with him is virtual. But yeah, spent an awful lot of time with him in that run up to getting back on Tour.

Q. Are you a leaderboard watcher, and then depending on that answer, obviously, what will you and Johnny do tomorrow with no crowds to kind of gauge what's going on and try to figure out where you stand in the tournament?

PAUL CASEY: I'm not much of a leaderboard watcher. I actually didn't look at the leaderboard yesterday. I don't think I looked at it once yesterday. Today I glanced at it a couple of times. I glanced at it on the 12th green quickly. What will I do tomorrow? I probably won't look at them tomorrow. They are not that interesting. We usually get a lot more interesting stuff on leaderboards, don't we. Now it's just leaderboards. It's kind of dull. I like it when they are flashing through graphics and stats.

What will I do tomorrow? How will I gauge it? Well, you know, sometimes we rely on the TV crews to ask the leader's number or something like that. Obviously there's no roars out there, but you can generally sense a vibe and if the cameras are with you, you're doing pretty well, and if they are not, you probably need to pick it up a little bit. That's probably how we will gauge tomorrow.

JOHN DEVER: This is a really talented, deep leaderboard. I know you just said you're not going to pay a lot of attention, but is that exciting, daunting, somewhere in between?

PAUL CASEY: I find it exciting. It's really cool. You know, I'm probably considered a veteran now, which I don't mind if I am. You know, I'm 43, and playing against guys in their 20s, early 20s, barely in their 20s, I relish that challenge. Love the way -- these boards popped up, we have Morikawa and Champ and Scottie is up there. Watching guys like Morikawa, phenomenal talents, and I relish the opportunity to go up against them. They probably weren't watching me growing up. They were watching Tiger or Phil or whoever their favorite player was, but they probably saw my name on leaderboards occasionally, so it's nice I'm still hanging around out here with a chance to beat them.

Q. What's the major that you feel like you let get away that you feel like you maybe could have won, and how much does having not won a major bother you when you look at your career?

PAUL CASEY: Yeah, it doesn't bother me. That's an easy one to answer.

Which one? There was one -- I have to check the year. I want to say it was about the year Trevor Immelman won the Masters. What year was that? 2007? I had a ball move on the 7th green. Scrap that. The 6th green, the par 3. I didn't cause it to move but it moved and I had already addressed the putt and that shook me and threw me, I was I think tied for the lead at the time, playing very, very good golf and ended up making bogey just because the ball moved.

Then I bogeyed the next, and I was just shaken, and had a good chance at birdie on 8. Didn't make it. Up-and-down from probably 30 feet. So that was the one that frustrated me the most. Even looking at The Open at St. Andrews, that didn't bother me; Louis played amazing golf. But yeah, that one year at Augusta is the one that bothered me the most.