With the Masters lying seductively on the horizon like a green jacket-clad siren warbling on a rocky outcrop, Paul Casey has picked a pretty good time to find title-winning form.

In this capricious pursuit, of course, that form can disappear as quickly as it appears. Casey is well aware of that. He has endured the highs and lows, both on and off the course, during a long career, but at 41, the Englishman is in a very good place. “I’m getting older but I feel like I’m getting better,” he said after successfully defending his Valspar Championship title in Tampa at the weekend.

Casey’s win, the third in a row on the PGA Tour by a European golfer following Francesco Molinari’s victory in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Rory McIlroy’s triumph at the Players Championship, has hoisted him up to No.11 on the world rankings.

“I would love to be the No.1 in the world . . . but I don’t think that’s attainable just yet” added Casey who did have a stint in the top three during a glory-laden 2009.

“Tiger and Phil [Mickelson] were ahead of me then,” he recalled of that fulfilling season before a rib injury knocked him back. “I was proud to get to No.3, I was playing some amazing stuff. And then I got injured and didn’t play the rest of the season and it went downhill horribly from there. It’s cool that I’m back up there.”

Casey’s win in the 2018 edition of the Valspar Championship was his first on the PGA Tour for nine years.

While he had won four times on the European Tour in that period, hauling himself back to the top of the leaderboard in an event on the other side of the Atlantic last year was a significant milestone.

“My victory here last year put me back into a frame of mind, a comfort that I felt many years ago during my career when I was winning consistently in Europe,” he said.

“People forget, I’m not a prolific winner but I’ve won 17 times around the world. It’s not bad. I would like it to be more, obviously. I know how to win, plain and simple but I think I had forgotten and last year’s victory maybe broke the seal.

“From the 2009 victory at Houston to last year’s victory, I had gone through a lot, with injuries and a divorce. There were certainly low points, but for the last five, six years I’ve been very content.

“In golf, you don’t beat the game. Occasionally you take a chunk here and there but you have to enjoy that quest for whatever it is. I would have liked to have won more [PGA Tour events], but there were victories around the world in other places and you have to take fuel from somewhere else.”