LIV GOLF MAYAKOBA

February 24, 2023

Paul Casey

El Camaleón Golf Course

Quick Quotes

Q. You bounced back nicely.

PAUL CASEY: Yeah, so I've never played here before. I'm used to desert golf, when you've got that feeling of two hazards either side of the fairway, and this place like gets you on -- it just puts you on edge. So I messed up the second hole. I hit one in the penalty area on the right-hand side, a poor tee shot and paid the price for it.

But there are so many just difficult tee shots that kind of get your attention. They kind of make you a bit nervous, to be honest, in this wind.

Yeah, I paid the price, bad tee shot. But you take your medicine. Made a good two-putt for a six and then bounced back. Double bounced back because I birdied 3 and 4 -- is that right? What did I do?

Q. You birdied three straight.

PAUL CASEY: I birdied three straight. See what happens? Maybe I was in the zone for the last three. But no, it was a really good day. A blemish is a blemish, but it is what it is. I'd be surprised if anyone gets through this tournament this week without making some kind of error like that. It is what it is.

Q. What was going best for you today?

PAUL CASEY: I've been striking it well. I haven't played as much golf as I probably would to this point. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that we had an off-season. I took full advantage of it. My ball-striking is always my sort of strength, my forte. Ball-striking was good coming in, played some practice rounds with Bryson and Ban and Chucky. In fact, at various times we've played all as a team this week. But the putting was, to be honest, not very good the first three days being on-site and even in the pro-am yesterday. My putting wasn't very good, and I worked with -- Johnny Long Socks is back out --

Q. I saw that.

PAUL CASEY: Luke Donald warmed him up nicely for me in the Middle East, which thank you very much, Luke. Obviously he and Johnny have history, great history when Luke was No. 1.

Johnny is like, look, the posture didn't look very good with the putting, so we just tightened up the posture a little bit, and we did that literally yesterday afternoon, so like an 11th hour kind of lesson, and did a little bit this morning, just posture again, and suddenly the ball is going on line off the putter.

So the key really was the putting today.

Q. When was the last time you guys were together before today?

PAUL CASEY: Oh, Johnny did Thailand for me last year, and then he got sick in Saudi. No, but this is -- Johnny and I worked together as you know for five years or longer, and then we took a sabbatical. That was shortly after COVID. It was all a bit sort of time for a break. Our relationship is better than it's ever been, but it was time for a break because we were both burnt out. So here we are, back, refreshed, and ready for some more action.

Q. Is he going to be on the bag for all 14?

PAUL CASEY: Yeah, he's getting his visa sorted, so hopefully he's in Tucson, but that depends -- if he misses Tucson, it's only because he's getting his visa sorted. It's been approved, he's just got to go get it.

But I had Fooch on the bag, Mark Fulcher on the bag in Miami, who works for Billy Horschel. It's all incestuous. It all kind of goes around. I've not officially asked him, but if -- and I'm friends with Billy Ho, who played good at Honda, so maybe I'd borrow Fooch for another week. You never know.

Q. You do have a habit of playing well in the early months.

PAUL CASEY: Do I?

Q. Yeah, especially --

PAUL CASEY: I won Abu Dhabi twice, I've won Dubai --

Q. Like top 10s and --

PAUL CASEY: Yeah.

Q. I looked it up, the first eight weeks of the calendar year, you seem to play well, have good results:

PAUL CASEY: I mean, I like an off-season, so even though maybe it's been shorter in the past, I like the fact that I can go and do some work and work on the game and try to maybe find something new that I've -- a new little arrow in the quiver that you can apply on the golf course.

You know, trying to maintain that high level is probably the most difficult thing in our sport. The guys who are -- I've done it many a season, playing good golf all the way through, but it is incredibly tough. But I've not thought about it. I come out feeling a little bit rusty, slightly panicked, but in a good way of like I need to really focus and get down and knuckle down, so maybe that's why I play well early. I don't rest on my laurels or take it easy. Maybe I don't do as much work as some of the other guys do in terms of hours, but I try to be highly effective in the sense of maybe arriving slightly under prepared is a good thing mentally.

Q. In terms of like the team environment, the team competition, do you feel like it's not just going to be a 4 Aces runaway this year?

PAUL CASEY: I hope not. I hope not. I mean, obviously they made a tweak to their team. Peter is now in, Talor Gooch is out. You never know what that's going to do. On paper, analysts or statisticians will say it's going to do this and this and this. Who knows. They captured some lightning in a bottle last year. They were formidable.

But there's other teams who are very keen to steal their thunder, so to speak. There was great momentum for -- the whole team thing in Miami was just a blast, but I think a lot of people were like, yeah, hang on, we just can't let the 4 Aces run away with this again. I'm not going to predict, but we'll see what happens.