CASEY’S VICTORIES

Paul Casey grew up in England, played college golf at Arizona State and has played around the world since turning pro — sometimes exclusively in Europe, recently only on the PGA Tour, lately a mixture of both.

It makes him chuckle to see the context of his victories.

When he won the Valspar Championship in 2018, he heard references to his first victory in nine years. That was true — it was his first PGA Tour victory since 2009, when he won the Houston Open. More recently, he won the Porsche European Open in Germany, and it was his first European Tour victory in five years.

Hang on a minute.

“I haven’t played that many times in Europe since rejoining the tour last year,” Casey said.

Since his victory in the KLM Open in 2014, Casey had played only seven regular European Tour events until his victory in September. He played once in 2015, the BMW Masters in Shanghai, the week after a World Golf Championship in Shanghai. He didn’t play at all in 2016 and 2017, rejoining the tour to be part of the Ryder Cup again for the 2018 matches in Paris.

“Any win is special,” Casey said. runner- up to Danny Willett in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. But he had another round of golf on the immediate horizon, and that made him happy.

Rahm headed straight from Wentworth to St. Andrews for the Dunhill Links Championship.

“I’m going to play the Old Course with my dad for the first time, so there’s a lot of positives to look at,” Rahm said. “It will be in bad weather, which I believe is how golf is supposed to be played in Scotland, right? It is how it is. There’s many reasons why I should be smiling.” And then he offered one more.

“The week after that, I’m going to Spain,” he said.