Casey reflects on emotional win at Valspar

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – When PGA TOUR players return to venues where they have won, there are certain sights that can wake the mind and produce warm memories sure to elicit an instant smile. A clutch tee shot. Maybe a hole-out from a bunker. A long eagle putt from some corner of a specific green.

At the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course this week, Paul Casey, the event’s 2018 champion, had an interesting object that stirred his memory bank: A simple, comfortable couch in the locker room. That’s where Casey sat somewhat helplessly for nearly an hour and a half after a great par save on the Copperhead’s 18th hole on Sunday a year ago left him in the clubhouse with a final-round 6-under 65 and 10-under-par score (274) for the week.

One by one, as he watched the players behind him take on two back-nine par-5s before entering Copperhead’s famed closing Snake Pit (holes 16-18), he figured that surely, somebody was bound to catch him. Perhaps it would be Tiger Woods, who was shooting four rounds in the 60s for the first time in nearly five years. Or Patrick Reed. But no competitor could finish double-digits under par, and instead of rising off the couch to ready for a playoff, Casey needed only to stand up and collect a trophy.

The victory was emotional on several levels. For one, Casey, now 41, had not won in nearly a decade, since the 2009 Shell Houston Open, despite having played well since the start of 2015 (seven top-3 finishes, 24 top 10s heading into 2017-18). And winning again erased all the inherent demons and doubts that it might not happen again.

“I think it was emotional for numerous reasons,” he said, “because it had been awhile since I had won, but coupled with real good golf for what, about three seasons or so, opportunities … a couple of which I admit I wish the outcome had been different, and a couple where guys had just played so brilliantly I just didn’t have a chance. But you still feel like those are opportunities, and they just slipped by."

“I’m acutely aware of how difficult it is to win out here, how strong it is, week in, week out, that the level of competition – it’s just not good enough to be in the lead after 54 holes. You’ve got to go out and shoot another brilliant round of golf.”

The Copperhead at Innisbrook makes a player earn everything the old-fashioned way. Only once since 2012 has any winner at the 7,340-yard, par-71 layout finished 72 arduous holes at more than 10 under (Canadian Adam Hadwin won at 14-under 270 in 2017). There’s simply a toughness and grittiness to the golf course that lends itself to players surviving the place more than ever overpowering it.

Once the site of a mixed-team event that started in 1977, the Copperhead has been part of the PGA TOUR schedule since 2000, and this weekend will crown its 20th champion. For all the great young stars of the PGA TOUR, the Copperhead is a venue that rewards tacticians and experience. Eleven of the previous winners have been 34 years old or older. At 40, Casey was the fourth tournament winner past his 40th birthday. Conversely, Jordan Spieth, who won Valspar in 2015 at age 21, is one of only four twentysomething winners, and the event's only champion younger than 27.

“This course, there’s a lot of different ways to play certain holes,” said NBC/Golf Channel analyst Paul Azinger, who lives a little more than an hour from Innisbrook. “Once you get settled in and map it out, I’m going here, here and here, and that’s just how you play it. I just think it’s a veterans’ paradise. There are no gimmes out here (for holes)."

“The veterans dig that. You’ve got to be a ballstriker. You’re not going to fluke your way around here.”

Jim Furyk will make his 11th start at Valspar this week, and said Copperhead easily ranks among his five favorite courses on the PGA TOUR. He even played a junior event at the Copperhead years ago, and won here in 2010 just shy of his 40th birthday, breaking a long winless drought. Furyk, 48, who began his season with limited status, comes in off a red-hot finish at THE PLAYERS, where his birdie-birdie finish on Sunday left him just one shot shy of winner Rory McIlroy.

“I think experience is key,” Furyk said. “Paul (Casey) hits the ball plenty hard, but I don't look at this as a place where you're going to dominate it with power too often. You still have to place the ball and think your way around this golf course really well."

“There's a couple places where that power, like on the back nine, maybe on 14 (a 590-yard par 5) you can get home in two and maybe make a birdie there. There's a couple places where it could help. But this is more about picking a golf course apart and using your head and playing the game a little bit. So it doesn't surprise me that you've got some wily veterans that have done well here.”

Before last year’s Valspar, Casey had missed the cut in his two previous trips to Innisbrook, and hadn’t played the event in four years. But as he and his caddie, John McLaren, walked the tree-lined fairways a year ago, they spoke about the quality of the golf course, and how Casey probably should have showed up here more often. And then came a Sunday in which Casey, who’d made an adjustment to stop shutting down the face of his putter, needed only 21 putts, and that closing 65, and oh, right, waiting upon that big, beautiful couch. Casey said the feeling he had watching others potentially control his fate down the stretch gave him a better sense of what his relatives must feel when he competes.

In the end, it all worked out just fine. When Woods failed to birdie the 18th hole from long range, Casey was a PGA TOUR winner once again. Casey joked that it was the first time Tiger had stuck around to congratulate him; usually those roles were reversed.

“The putting was key, and that’s going to be the key this week,” said Casey, who ranks 16th in FedExCup points this season on the strength of six top-20 finishes, including a runner-up showing at Pebble Beach. His has posted solid results despite rankings of 161st in Putts Per Round (29.47) and being 189th in Strokes Gained: Putting.

“If I want to defend, the putting has to be strong, and it’s kind of been the thing. My opportunity.”