Ryder Cup ambition drives Casey
BACK among the top players in golf, Paul Casey is rejoining the European Tour so he can get back to the Ryder Cup.
Casey said he will become a European Tour member again after a three-year absence, making the 40-year-old from England eligible for next year’s Ryder Cup in France. He last played for Europe in the 2008 matches at Valhalla.
“I have missed it too much,” Casey said at the HSBC Champions.
“I have missed my contribution to British golf, my contribution to Europe. My Ryder Cup experiences have been the highlight of my career. I want to be — and need to be — part of the European Tour, and then obviously that puts me in line to hopefully, possibly, play another Ryder Cup, which I would dearly love to do.”
Casey went through a deep slump brought on mainly by injuries and partly by a divorce. He fell as low as No.169 in the world four years ago until a resurgence on and off the golf course. He has won twice in Europe and done everything but win on the PGA Tour, rising to No.15 in the world.
He remarried and has two small children, the second born a few months ago. Casey has said he was not bitter about being left off the 2010 Ryder Cup team when he was No.9 in the world, rather that his priority was to his family in Arizona, and playing two tours meant too much time on the road. Being entrenched in the top 50 and changes to the minimum events required for European Tour membership make it easier. What persuaded Casey was a long conversation with his wife, Pollyanna, who didn’t want him to look back in five years and wish he had rejoined the European Tour.
“The only thing that still resonates is she said, ‘If you don’t do this, I don’t want you to regret not doing this,’ which is the thing that stayed with me,” Casey said.
He will not officially rejoin until the last week in November and plans to play his first European Tour event in Abu Dhabi next January.
“I want to play another Ryder Cup,” Casey said.
“It was really important to me. But it’s not just the Ryder Cup. I missed playing on the European Tour and being part of English golf. It’s home. I know that I’m in Arizona and I’ll continue to live there. But I missed a piece of me the last three years.”