LIV Golf is making its South African debut this week at the Club at Steyn City in Johannesburg, the latest stop on the league’s expanding global schedule. During a pre-tournament press conference, the Crushers GC offered a candid look into the realities of the game, with teammate Paul Casey providing a particularly sharp perspective on what keeps even the best players coming back — even when theirs games are off.
“It’s not a game anybody has ever perfected,” Casey said. “It’s that quest, it’s that process. I think we all deep down are addicted to trying to be better.
“AK [Anthony Kim] says it every day, 1 percent better. One percent is a huge amount. We’re trying to be just a traction, just improve on something.”
In practical terms, that “1 percent” improvement could mean a slightly better start line, more clubface stability at impact or increased accuracy with distance control. While these small gains are not visible to fans, with enough time, they are often the key that separate players from the rest of the field.
But as every golfer knows, in this game, progress is never permanent.
“It’s always something, and that’s the frustration of the game and the beauty of the game,” Casey says, “We are no different than any other golfer. Our level might be different, the ability that we have, the shots we can hit, but our frustration with the game is no different.”
So if even a player of Casey’s caliber feels the frustration that us amateurs do, what separates elite players from the average Joes? According to Casey, it all comes down to practice and drive.
How much tour pros really practice?
“More than you could ever imagine,” Casey says, “I always feel that somebody else is out there working harder than me, so there’s always that drive.”
He calls it secret grill work, or secret grill club — a term for the unglamorous, obsessive practice routines we rarely get to witness.
“Whether it’s guys hitting 1,000 6-foot putts in the hotel room at night with the wife on the phone checking their form or whatever,” he says. “We’ve heard those stories. We’re all doing it.”
It’s this relentless repetition that powers elite performance. As fans we only see the booming drives and clutch putts, but the true difference is forged in the fire of focused work.
Tour pros like Casey spend countless hours fine-tuning their swings and sharpening their short games, but this dedication isn’t about achieving perfection — it’s about persistence and the refusal to be outworked. Because golf rewards those who embrace the grind and work patiently and diligently to sharpen their skills, trusting that the effort will eventually show up in their on-course performance.
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