To be fair, allow me to nail the Cheltenham thing. Yes, he was born there but he has homes now in Surrey's Weybridge and Arizona's Scottsdale, the desert state where he also attended college as an amateur and from where he was good enough to break Tiger Woods All-American scoring record.
And, naturally, he will need to break something else belonging to Tiger today - the world number one's heart this time - if Casey is to actually slip on a Green Jacket. After a day studded with action from here, there and everyone, the predicted winds staying away, the conditions damn near perfect, Woods inevitably drilled his way back into the heart of the action via a 68 that took him to five under par and close enough up behind Casey and his pals.
Slowly the old focus returned, slowly the putts began to drop, suddenly his name hit the leaderboards that stud this garden course and the collective sigh of resignation was, I swear, discernible as it whistled amid Augusta's pines while his relief as he glanced up at the names and saw his at last creep onto the bottom rung was obvious.
He knows the sort of signal this sends out to everyone else in this field. Until now the others have been able to play free of the Tiger factor, able, temporarily at least, to persuade themselves that he had turned left along Washington Road and got lost somewhere.
Not now they can't. It is still going to be a titanic battle for Woods to win this opening major but at least he has joined the fray now and with lousy weather, particularly high winds, forecast for this afternoon then anything remains possible. Certainly the smartest money currently suggests that while yesterday's surprisingly benign conditions encouraged low scoring, today's winds will demand defence rather than attack. And guess who can defend a score better than anyone?
'I guess 68 was about the worst score I could have had today,' he said. 'Obviously I've got a lot of work to do now if I'm to win this thing but if it does turn out blustery and cooler that could help. Whatever, I've put myself back into the tournament.'
This was a vital round for Woods. His surprising decision earlier this year to suggest that the grand slam was 'easily doable' flew in the face of his usual carefully considered rhetoric even if he is good enough for no one to snigger, least of all in this quarter, at such a suggestion. However, he was digging a big hole by issuing this statement of intent.
Fact is, ludicrously, that if he falls at this first hurdle of the golf year he will be judged as a failure for the first time in his career. If he then went on to miss out at the US Open in June, The Open in July and the USPGA Championship in Augusta, things would get worse and he would be viewed as an overly confident fool. This, believe me, Tiger Woods would not like at all.
Whether players such as Casey, young American Brandt Snedeker, old American Steve Flesch, South Africa's Trevor Immelman or the still lurking Phil Mickelson can stop Woods remains to be seen but it should guarantee one of the great finishing days at this most glamorous of the year's majors. Of these, my own feeling is that Immelman has an outstanding chance.
A long-time admirer of him, it was good to hear Gary Player compare his compatriot to Ben Hogan in terms of ball-striking. Immelman, who now lives in Orlando in Florida, should have taken at least one stride forward last year but first a desperately debilitating intestinal virus and then a big health scare when he was diagnosed with a tumour near a lung - it turned out to be benign - ruined his year. Here at Augusta the brilliance some of us suspected had been waiting to be unleashed has indeed appeared for public scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Casey apart, there is still hope wrapped around two other Englishmen, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood. Poulter is full of potential. Or so he claims. He may have covered himself in something distasteful when he chose to pose unclothed for a golf magazine and to suggest that if he ever unleashed his full potential then it would be all about him and Woods may have been hyperbole, and bad taste, taken to the limits but he is at least performing excellently here so far.
His hole-in-one on Thursday was a highlight but to move into the weekend tied for third place is a very decent effort and one I am pleased to see because, for his occasional foolishness, Poulter is a nice enough bloke who at least tries to step outside the usual mundane rut that is the favourite haunt of the average golf pro.
And then there is Westwood. Slim, trim and full of brio, the chap from Worksop is still in here punching. When I saw him in the clubhouse, he was eager to get on with it. His manager Chubby Chandler could not help but smile as he absorbed his player's mood.
'You know what?' said Chandler, grinning. 'Since he's lost all this weight, Lee thinks he is Brad Pitt, and that's not a bad thought to take with you out on to this golf course.' Except that it all turned ugly for Brad Westwood when he bogeyed 11, 12 and 14. More the pits than Pitt, unfortunately.
