Some tour players are so easily distracted you'd swear they could hear the grass grow. Philip Reidtalks to Englishman Paul Casey about surviving on a day when he wasn't really on form

Paul Casey would not normally fall into that category, but in yesterday's first-round defence of his world matchplay title the Ryder Cup player seemed to have picked up some of the traits of, say, a certain Colin Montgomerie.

If a camera clicked, Casey heard it. If someone moved, he saw it. If a butterfly landed a mile away, you can bet your bottom dollar he was aware of it. To say his mind wasn't entirely focused on the job would be an understatement.

And yet some players find a way to win even if, as Casey put it of his encounter with American Jerry Kelly, he was guilty of "hitting the ball sideways". Yesterday, he found a way.

Casey may not have fired on all cylinders, but he still progressed to the second round with a 3 and 2 win over Kelly. Today he will meet US Open champion Angel Cabrera, of Argentina.

Maybe it's just that Casey likes Wentworth's West Course at this time of year. After all, this win, combined with his victory march of a year ago, means he is undefeated in the World Matchplay, his unbeaten sequence now stretching to five.

Can he make it six wins out of six? To do so, Casey will need a vastly improved performance against Cabrera, who played the best golf of anyone in the first round.

"I think I was very lucky, to be honest," remarked Casey, after his win. "When you're hitting it sideways, as I was, you've got to put every ounce of pressure on your opponent as you can. But finding ditches (as he did on the ninth and the 15th) is not good golf."

Casey had started well in the morning with a run of three birdies from the fourth to go three-up on Kelly. But that was as good as it got. For most of the day it was a real struggle with his swing and his mind.

Casey, though, got away with it all.

"I don't know what it was, I was just easily distracted. There seemed to be people all over the place," he observed of an afternoon round in which he double-bogeyed the ninth, hit a five-wood approach into another hazard on the 12th and suffered another double-bogey on the 15th.

So it was with some relief Casey finally discovered a birdie on the 16th, rolling in a six-footer, to stop Kelly's fightback (the American had been five down after 26 holes) to finish the match.

Part of Casey's battleplan for the days ahead involved a telephone call to his coach, Peter Kostis, who is based in America. But the Englishman suspected he already knew what he would be told, as these phone calls have become a regular part of Casey's life on tour.

"He'll probably tell me something like, 'You were a little bit tired, a little fatigued. Your legs were a little bit slow, and your posture was poor'. Nine times out of 10, the stuff he tells me has to do with my posture. It's going to be a long week, especially if I play like that."

Conversely, Cabrera's performance in beating two-time US Open champion Retief Goosen was better than anyone.

Cabrera was four-under-par for his final five holes, and went around the Burma Road course in 65 strokes in the morning, to be just two-up on Goosen at lunch.

But Cabrera then took a stranglehold on the contest with a run of three birdies on the outward nine of the afternoon to move four-up. The Argentinian finished off the rout by winning the 11th, where he left his wedge approach dead, and then completed the job by winning the 13th in par.

"I know I face a tough task against Angel," said Casey. "He's a former winner around here (in last year's BMW PGA) and he knows his way around. He'll be about 20 yards past me, but hopefully I can battle him to the death. Hopefully I can pick up on his rhythm, you know, the way he strikes the ball, and maybe that can carry over to my game and I can feed off that."