HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Paul Casey shot an opening-round 74 at the RBC Heritage presented by Boeing, but his work on the greens was hardly the problem. While he hit his tee shot out of bounds and triple-bogeyed the par-4 eighth hole, Casey gained nearly a full stroke on the field with a cross-handed putting stroke he’s been using for less than a week. The change goes back to the Masters, where, fed up after rounds of 73-74-73, Casey and longtime caddie John McLaren decided to make a dramatic change for round four. “It was a text conversation last Saturday night,” said Casey, who took just 26 putts at Harbour Town on Thursday. “Johnny suggested the claw. I’ve never done the claw, so I nixed that idea.” They decided he should try cross-handed, a style Casey had practiced with because it fixes the various alignment and biomechanical flaws in his regular stroke. There was only one sticking point: He didn’t have much time to practice the new stroke before his tee time Sunday. Enter his final-round playing partner Billy Horschel. “On the putting green before we got to the first tee, I was still asking Billy how to grip the thing, because he’s left-hand low,” Casey said with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘How do you grip it?’ Because my index finger on my right hand, I wasn’t comfortable with it on the outside, so I just left it where it was and just wrapped the left over it so it’s kind of hidden underneath.” Despite the hasty change, it worked: Casey birdied his first two holes and shot 69 (T26). “I made a really nice eight-footer on the first, made another one on the second,” he said. “I putted well. I felt comfortable right from the get-go with it. I think there’s a Nicklaus quote where he said if he could have done one thing different, he would have gone left-hand low. “I’d dabbled with it a little bit,” Casey continued. “I think I tried it once at a tournament in Dubai or something like that. It didn’t go very well. But I’ve practiced a lot with it, and it solves a lot of my flaws that I normally have when I’m putting regular-style.” On the agenda for Friday will be to keep rolling it well on the greens while hitting more fairways (8/14 in the first round) and more greens in regulation (9/18).
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