Opening up on the reasons he joined LIV Golf for the first time, Paul Casey revealed physical burnout along with the health of John McLaren, his caddie, were major reasons for joining the league two years ago.
The 2021 Dubai Desert Classic champion was among the second wave of defections to LIV Golf in 2022, with the Englishman telling the Are You Not Entertained? podcast that McLaren, affectionally known as Johnny ‘Long Socks’, underwent surgery to remove a brain tumour last year and that the duo needed to reduce their schedule that Casey calculated at 30 events a year.
“I was very much burnt out and it’s interesting listening to you guys – it’s all about the fan and I believe that in sport that’s why sport exists,” said Casey, who was a DP World Tour and PGA Tour dual member before leaving for LIV Golf.
“But I had treated golf very much as a profession for a long, long time and I just got to a point of burnout, and with COVID and everything else and sitting on the Player Advisory Councils and the committees and the European Tour, DP World Tour and PGA Tour.
“Suffering injuries and basically being fairly unhappy with the state of the game of golf. I went for something new, plain and simple. For my own sake, for my family’s sake and that was a long answer to a short question, but I am actually pretty damn happy playing on LIV right now, I must admit.
“I will say this, and I’ll throw this into the mix, and this is something I’ve not talked about, but people know it on LIV and people know it on the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour as well.
“You know my dear caddy Johnny McLaren, Johnny long socks as he’s known? – Johnny and I have been best mates and a team for the last eight years, well Johnny had a brain tumour removed last April,” Casey explained about his caddie, who also took leave from carrying at the end of 2021 to focus on his mental health.
“So when you’re never quite sure what is going on in people’s lives, there’s a lot and that was something Johnny and I spoke about and that was another reason why we went to LIV because we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing.
“One of the breaking point moments was the end of the year in 2021, during the COVID protocols let’s say, testing, we were throwing out false positives on our way to a tournament in Japan where if you turned up in Japan, you were going to get locked up in a hotel room for 10 days, pretty small hotel room by all accounts, and both of us basically hit a breaking point and we just said, ‘We can’t do this anymore’.
“Knowing Johnny’s health issues at the time and what we were dealing with, that’s a little bit more of an insight into why I’m currently doing what I’m doing.”
Casey is currently playing in the DP World Tour’s Porsche Singapore Classic; his first DP World Tour start since moving to LIV Golf.
