WHAT began as an interview in a Fulham pub in which a promising professional golfer was rather opinionated, and proved himself unusually aware of the world beyond the courtesy car and the breaking putt, has become the War of Casey’s Quotes.

The absurd escalation proves Casey’s principal point: Americans are often insular, prone to an exaggerated sense of their own supremacy, and ultra-sensitive to criticism. “Ours is the greatest democracy on Earth, and don’t you dare say otherwise.”

The issue may die a death, or it may have serious ramifications all the way to the K Club and the next Ryder Cup match in September 2006, but since blame is likely to be chucked around indiscriminately, and the first casualty is always truth, it is worth reviewing the sequence of events.

Casey gave a long interview that appeared in these pages last Sunday. Like many who have travelled and lived in the United States, he has been struck by the country’s evident contradictions — the extremes of parochialism and worldliness; the juxtaposition of wretched poverty and wealth beyond imagining.

And like many young golfers making their way from Europe to the US Tour, he has had to put up with the assumption that American golf and golfers are superior. Like Tony Jacklin and Severiano Ballesteros before him, Casey has bridled at that travesty, but also used it to steel himself.

On Americans in general, he said, on the record: “Sometimes they infuriate me. In Scottsdale, it’s not so bad, because the people there have travelled and you can have civilised conversations with them, but the vast majority of Americans simply don’t know what’s going on. They have no concept of the UK, for instance.”

On playing against the American Ryder Cup team, he said: “Oh, we properly hate them. We wanted to beat them as badly as possible.”

Casey also criticised the appointment of Tom Lehman as the next American Ryder Cup captain and chided leading US players for their reluctance to travel beyond America to represent their country. Like many others, he cited the World Cup event in Seville, where the US is represented by Scott Verplank and Bob Tway — 22nd and 57th in the world.

It was unusually candid stuff, but hardly explosive. And Casey knew what he was talking about. He went to Arizona State University on a golf scholarship; his girlfriend, Jocelyn, is American. His main residence is in Scottsdale, Arizona, and he pays his taxes to Uncle Sam.

The appearance of the interview caused scarcely a ripple of controversy. Casey read it and was content that his views had been properly represented. But last Tuesday, the Daily Mirror, in a classic tabloid manoeuvre, lifted Casey’s quotes, neglected to confirm them with the man himself, and twisted them.

The Mirror headline is sufficient to prove the point: “Americans are stupid. I hate them,” was the main heading, with a sub-heading of “Says Ryder Cup star Paul Casey.” In fact, Casey never used the word “stupid”. Nor did he use the word “hate” other than in the context of sporting competition.

The next day, he and his World Cup partner, Luke Donald, gave a pre-event press conference in Seville. When asked about his comments about Americans, Casey could easily have taken the coward’s way out. Like many before him, he might have complained that he had been misquoted.

Instead, he said: “I stand by my words. I think Americans do have a tendency to wind people up. When they are chanting, ‘USA!’ and there’s lots of them, it just makes you want to beat them even more. That was the point I was trying to get across. They probably failed to realise that it riles us and the rest of the world. I don’t hate Americans.”

Invited to apologise to the two American players at the World Cup, Casey declined. “I don’t mind explaining,” he said. “I was fine with the piece in The Sunday Times, but yesterday’s piece I wasn’t very happy with.”

Equally significant was Donald’s reaction. He, too, could have sought the sanctuary of denial. Instead, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Casey. “They do seem to be very insular,” he said. “I guess it’s a reaction to the Americans’ way of thinking that they have the best country in the world and they don’t really need to leave their country. I think a small percentage of Americans, I don’t know the numbers, have passports. Because of that, they are in some ways a little bit naive.”

Like Casey, Donald spoke from experience. He also went to college in the US and lives and plays most of his golf there. By standing up for his partner, incidentally, he also demonstrated the kind of solidarity that distinguishes Europe’s Ryder Cup teams.

But the affair was already out of control. Amy Sabbatini, an American whose husband, Rory, is representing South Africa at the World Cup, sported a T-shirt with “Stoopid Amerikan” on the front and “PC isn’t PC” on the back. Her message was not clear, but she had obviously gone to some trouble.

Casey’s local paper in America, the Arizona Republic, meanwhile, heaped distortion on distortion by reporting yesterday that he had told the Daily Mirror that he thinks Americans are stupid.

More damagingly, the head of Acushnet, Casey’s American sponsor for clubs, balls and shoes, issued a statement that was not explicit but carried the clear implication that it was terminating its commercial relationship with Casey because of comments that it considered anti-American.

One by one, it seems, Americans are stepping forward to demonstrate unwittingly that they cannot distinguish between a desire to beat them on the sporting field, which ought to be a compliment, with a desire to undermine their culture, and that they are incapable of accepting any suggestion that their country is less than perfect.

Casey may be a poorer man, although he won’t be poor. He may be sadder and wiser, but the worst outcome would be if his candour were to be replaced by reticence. In a world of the bland, the blinkered and the blind, Casey is one man who has not been afraid to speak his mind. For that, he needs not to be vilified, but saluted.