Q. How was that first tee shot? What was going through the mind?
PAUL CASEY: So cool that was. Not an ounce of nerves, a hundred percent excitement, which is really, really cool. Yeah, just really proud, to be honest. I think that's sort of the coolest thing because I thought about it for so long, to actually -- because to me you can't class yourself an Olympian until you've actually started your competition. Especially with the COVID tests going on, to get through every single COVID test, come on, cross the fingers. Yeah, it was just brilliant. And then it's just down to business. Look at the scoring already. Golf course hasn't been easy so far this week we felt the rough has been tricky and the lead, what is it, 8-under? Wow.
Q. Is it quite nice to have the pressure not on you, but on other sports, you can come into a tournament a bit under the radar and all the focus is on gymnastics and swimming and other stuff like that. I know you've been around the village and the lodge and how you found that?
PAUL CASEY: It is, but then again you feel being around the Team GB building everybody watches and is aware of what is going on in every single sport. So I'm totally out of my depth on that. We play golf and that's it. And you walk into it and there's multiple TV's on and it's, I mean can't keep track of it. Like gold medal here and we got a bronze here and the gymnastics, I mean, it's amazing.
Q. Is it almost overload? Now you're in the competition, do you almost need to step away from that?
PAUL CASEY: No, it's a good thing. But my point being, I don't feel -- yeah there are other sports, for sure, the traditional we would say the Olympic sports we're used to watching and we're not under the spotlight, so to speak. But I feel that there's an immense sense of kind of responsibility to I've got to try and deliver as much as I can. I don't feel, they don't put pressure on you, Team GB is never about that, it's not been mentioned once, you need to deliver kind of thing. No, but you feel that with the other athletes because everybody else is performing so brilliantly, I want to perform and live up to their expectations as well.
Q. Is it almost a case of you proving yourself to them the track athletes and whoever it is who maybe don't follow golf and you want to show them?
PAUL CASEY: Yeah, I mean I'm just in, I got nothing to prove, I'm just in, I'm in awe of what they do. The amount of -- I mean, you just see the sort of just the ability and the talent and the athleticism just kind of everywhere you look around. We got bicycles that we roll around, we got a bunch of bicycles and I'm just rolling through the village and I'm barely keeping up with like four Aussie lads, they look like triathletes or something like that, just bounding along just doing laps, it's like bonkers. They're running at the same pace I'm riding. By the way, I've not got my running shoes out this week. Normally I go for a little run, but they haven't come out, I just can't do it.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports