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Raise Your Game: Who inspired you to take up golf?

Paul McGinley: My dad. He was a good amateur golfer and as a boy I used to caddy for him. That's a great way of learning about the game and the morality of the game, as well as the rewards that you get from playing well.

RYG: How old were you when you took the game up?

PM: I played Gaelic football a lot as a child, but I did play golf for three months every summer during the summer holidays. When I was 18-years-old I broke my kneecap playing football and that was the end of my football. After that I started to play golf 12 months of the year and that's when I started to improve rapidly.

RYG: And were you able to beat your dad?

PM: Yes that came quite quickly actually. The one thing that I would encourage all young people to do is to not focus on one sport at a very young age. Playing football and hurling in Ireland was a great way of getting a basis in sport. You don't have to be specialised in a sport at an early age in order to be good at it.

RYG: Apart from the money and the rewards, what motivated you to turn professional?

PM: The big motivation for me was to see how good I could get. Ego was probably part of it too as you want to play in those big occasions and you want to win big events. That still drives me to this day, to be part of something big. You feel the excitement when the TV cameras are there and you're live on TV, there's big crowds and the adrenaline runs.

RYG: Ireland has a very distinguished tradition of fine golfers over the years. What advice would you give to young people coming through the game such as Shane Lowry and Rory Mcllroy?

PM: The game is different and the amateurs coming through are different because they're better prepared than they were in my day. I've been a professional golfer 17 years now and I was relatively old at 25 when I turned pro.

The young guys now are turning professional at 17, 18 or 19 years of age. But they've had a different amateur career than I did. They've travelled the world, they play the best courses and the best tournaments and don't have to worry about expenses. They get to have all that experience in playing major amateur events throughout the world, and that really helps them when they turn professional.

RYG: You have got a great coach in Bob Torrance, what are the key points that he gives you in order to improve and keep motivated?

PM: Bob's got a saying, every time he shakes my hand before I go on the first tee, 'The happiest days of your life,' and it goes back to what I said earlier about the morality and spirit of the game. There's something special about sport that is played at a very high level, and there's a huge amount of satisfaction when you put a lot of effort into the game and you get results out the other side. It just gives you a sense of something inside that you don't quite get from anything else.

RYG: What makes a good captain?

PM: The first thing is camaraderie within the team and man-management. You have to understand the players not just as golfers, but as people too. It's understanding what motivates them, how to get the best out of them and when you need to put pressure on or sometimes take pressure off.

Secondly, there's the combination of who's going to play with who. Again it's awareness of personality and knowing which two players fit in terms of their golfing game. There are also things such as course management, strategy and keeping everybody involved.

RYG: Do you respond more to the carrot or the stick?

PM: In my first Ryder Cup, my captain Sam Torrance put the pressure on me walking over the bridge on the 18th hole and that approach certainly worked on that occasion for me. A lot of it is the situation, how a player is feeling, how he's played in the previous few holes. If he's really struggling with his game you might want to take the pressure off or if he's flying you might want to keep pushing him and keeping him aggressive.

Ian Woosnam was a wonderful captain as well. He led a different kind of team, insofar as the 12 of us were all playing extremely well. He stood out of the way and let the competitiveness and the good play of the team come through, which we did in a very strong way and it kept everybody bonded and together. So there's all different approaches.

RYG: Watching you play, you have a smile on your face a lot of the time. Can golf be fun as well as a serious sport?

PM: Yes, there's no doubt about it that you play your best when you're having the most fun. The level of excitement when I've played my best is huge inside. It's the feeling that you're doing something worthwhile and that's when good things happen.