Paul Casey was among three players from the top 25 in the world yet to play since the PGA Tour resumed competition amid the COVID-19 …
Paul Casey was among three players from the top 25 in the world yet to play since the PGA Tour resumed competition amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He and Patrick Cantlay are playing the Travelers Championship, leaving Adam Scott as the only one still not back.
Casey watched plenty on TV, and he was watching more than the golf.
He is on the Player Advisory Council and has been involved in so many details that went into the tour’s “Return to Golf” manifesto as it relates to health and safety. Yes, he was watching shots and putts. He also was watching for social distancing and bunker rakes being wiped down.
“I think it extends all the way through the membership, but certainly those of us who are on the PAC, I was sitting there watching it because I want this to go as smoothly as possible,” Casey said. “So trying to watch it and observe, knowing that those guidelines that we’ve talked about — how that works — is doable, what are the optics? Yeah, I’ve watched quite a bit of it.”
He gave it a passing grade, and he’s not about to judge again after only his first week back on tour.
“One of the things we’ve been criticized for as a whole has been the player-caddie handing the clubs backwards and forwards,” Casey said Tuesday. “And I admit, I did it today. It’s such a habit. A lot of things seemed fairly easy to do — mask wearing and distancing yourself, hand sanitizer… and wiping down flagsticks — it’s easy stuff. For some reason, handing clubs… I’m not going to criticize anything I’ve seen to this point because I haven’t played.”
Casey plans to play only the Travelers Championship before returning to Ohio, possibly for both tournaments at Muirfield Village. That’s why he has a fill-in caddie for the week. His regular, John McLaren, lives in England. With two-week quarantines on both sides in effect, that would have meant five weeks away from home to caddie in one tournament.
The PGA Tour has four groups of featured pairings for its “PGA Tour Live,” and then the rest of the field is supposed to be relatively random depending on a player’s category.
There are exceptions, and they were notable at Harbour Town.
Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker had three of his assistants in the field at the RBC Heritage, and it probably wasn’t a coincidence who was in their group.
