VOLVO PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 24, 2003

Paul Casey

Q. Lovely finish on the last.

PAUL CASEY: Yeah, that was a bonus. I had a couple -- well, a couple chances for eagle earlier on and they slipped by. So that was nice, a nice way to finish it off.

Q. Leader in the clubhouse.

PAUL CASEY: Going down the last few, that was the goal. I saw Stephen had a great round of golf and I thought I might be able to get him, but wasn't sure after not birdying 16 and struggling a bit on 14 and 15. So very, very happy to be the leader in the clubhouse.

Q. Do you expect to be up there at the end of today?

PAUL CASEY: Yeah, I wanted to be at least on the leaderboard before the leaders went out, at least somewhere up there. I knew I could be. The course was for taking this morning, the weather was absolutely perfect. Pace of play was nice. We were always sort of ten minutes ahead of our time. Couldn't see the group behind. It was perfect, just what you want on a nice Saturday morning.

Q. Something to make up for after yesterday?

PAUL CASEY: I didn't feel like I played poorly yesterday. I didn't play great but didn't really get any breaks and I was a bit disappointed with the way the round went.

Q. Heard you've been working hard in the past few weeks, more than just playing a lot ?

PAUL CASEY: I've done a lot of hard work. Too much to list, but six weeks, I probably had one day off from golf and it was at least seven hours a day. There were days I would be out there with Kostis for nine hours practising. We had some pretty intense days.

Q. What's the hardest session of practice?

PAUL CASEY: When Peter is in town, he's not a taskmaster, but he's very, very generous with his time. We get as much done as possible. He's there from very early in the morning to the time we get tired.

Q. Do you enjoy it?

PAUL CASEY: Oh, yeah. Thoroughly enjoy it.

Q. How many balls do you hit in a nine-hour workday?

PAUL CASEY: You can't really count them because you work on more than just hitting golf balls. I haven't counted them but I have some scars to prove them.

Q. After a day like yesterday on 17, what are your thoughts?

PAUL CASEY: I'd be disappointed I didn't hit the perfect tee shot, I hit it in the right semi. But yesterday's tee shot wasn't poor. If you look took the line down where it was going to drop, if the tree wasn't there, probably on the rope line, bang on the rope; and it hit the tree .And I've played here enough to have made that shot before and usually it will drop or it will drop out to the right. Maybe one in ten or two in ten will go out-of-bounds. So I felt like that was bad luck yesterday. Certainly wasn't a bad tee shot, but the wind pushed it a little bit further left than I thought. Six feet from being absolutely perfect.

Q. Any other bombs today?

PAUL CASEY: Putts? I made a good one on 5, the par 3, is that right? About a 45--footer or so for 2. Apart from that, it's just a couple of nice 15-footers.

Q. And the tee shot on 17?

PAUL CASEY: I didn't hit-great tee shot in there. Hit the tee but it came all the way back down the hill 20 yards short of the green and a great little pitch up to about a foot, foot and a half. I think that was the key there. I could finish off the round nicely from that point, dropping one there would have been really disappointing.

Q. Are you playing as well as you can or do you think there's still room for improvement?

PAUL CASEY: There's always room for improvement. When you say you are playing as well as you can, you're selling yourself short. But it was a nice, solid round of golf. Not spectacular; I made mistakes out, just a few.

Q. If it's a 64? What could it have been?

PAUL CASEY: What's a perfect round of golf? Knock it down the hole with a 5-iron? You're never going to play the perfect round of golf. So as far as -- it's possible, but what is perfection? Holing every shot, anything that's reachable. Holing it; that's perfection.

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