Casey excited by Tiger test

Casey & Woods

I enjoy playing with him (Tiger). I think it raises my game a little. You can feed off his focus and energy, especially right now, the roll he's on.

Paul Casey
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Paul Casey insists he is relishing the challenge of being paired with Tiger Woods for the opening two rounds of the CA Championship.

The duo will be joined by emerging South African talent Louis Oosthuizen for the first 36 holes at the Doral Resort in Miami for what is the second World Golf Championships event of the season.

World number one Woods will again be the major draw and heads into the tournament on an incredible run of form having won on ten of his last 11 starts - including the last WGC event in Arizona last month.

Add into the mix the fact that Woods has triumphed on his last three outings over Doral's 'Blue Monster' course and the scale of the task facing those trying to stop him this week is put in even sharper focus.

However, Casey, who played three rounds with Woods at last year's Masters, is hopeful he will be inspired by his playing partner.

"I enjoy playing with him," he stated. "I think it raises my game a little. You can feed off his focus and energy, especially right now, the roll he's on.

"He's setting the pace, so why not be right next to him on the course and see how you go? He's great to play with because he compliments you if you hit a good shot.

"I stay in my own little bubble but there have been occasions when you witness things that are a little different."

Incredible feat

Casey claims the most incredible feat he witnessed whilst playing with Woods was not actually a shot, but rather they way the American pulled out of a shot a millisecond before impact after being put off a bird flying overhead at Augusta 12 months ago.

"He's hit a lot of unbelievable shots and you think maybe there's a way I could hit that if you gave me enough balls but I don't think I could have checked the swing like that," the Englishman continued.

"The shadow went through and there was a split second there where he thought, 'maybe I don't want to hit the ball, I'm going to stop'. To have the awareness to be able to think of stopping and then stop, I've never seen anything like that."

Masters build-up

Casey, who heads to Miami on the back of a missed cut at last week's Arnold Palmer Invitational, admits that this week's tournament is a crucial part of his build-up to next month's Masters.

While conditions at Augusta will prove markedly different, he is all too aware that Doral will provide his last competitive action before the first major of the year as he takes two weeks off being heading to Georgia.

"This is a great sharpening exercise for Augusta, but it will be different," he added.

"This week it's all about trajectory control, consistency of strike, patience. At Augusta, it's going to be manoeuvring the ball, high ball flight, hitting off camber lies with the ball above your feet, hitting chip shots with the grain into you. That's what I'll be working on the next two weeks.

"There are many ways of playing shots around the greens at Augusta. You need more imagination and you need to be utterly precise."