• Open Championship

Battered but unbowed, Duval returns still eyeing victory

Alex Dimond at Royal Lytham & St Annes July 18, 2012

David Duval, the Open champion last time the tournament visited Royal Lytham & St Annes, is convinced that it is confidence that will decide who ultimately wins this week.

"I think that there's a point at which if you go up and down the driving range you're not going to see a whole lot of difference between how players hit the golf ball," the American noted on Wednesday. "You're going to see different distances the ball gets hit, but the player that is confident is the one who I think has the advantage."

So does the 40-year-old, who has hardly contended since his career highlight 11 years ago, think he can produce a repeat performance this week?

"Absolutely. I feel good about what I'm doing."

Duval's comments may be the typical response of the professional golfer - the only mindset that can enable one to survive at the highest level of any sport - but he justifies it based on some solid golf at last week's John Deere Classic that was only undermined by an ice-cold putter.

In reality, however, injuries - from back and elbow complaints to a new issue with his knees that specialists remain stumped about - have drained the former world No. 1 of his former ability to contend.

"There's a laundry list of problems," Duval said on Wednesday. "And that stuff, you know what, frankly, it wrecks golf. It wrecks your golf game.

"I continued to play and work through it, and all it did was get worse and worse and wreck my golf game and wreck my confidence, and there you are.

"In hindsight the big mistake I made in my career was not stopping sometime in early 2002 and probably not playing again until '04. I should have taken at least a year, maybe more off, just made sure everything kind of got healed, protected my confidence, protected my golf game and moved on and just given away that year and a half, not give away eight years like I did."

Duval is learning to live with his injuries, but that doesn't mean he feels his time has passed. A tied-second finish in the US Open at Bethpage back in 2009 - right when he was beset by problems - has given him a belief that he can still produced stellar golf on any given week, no matter how badly his body feels.

"In the midst of my struggles I nearly won the US Open," he pointed out. "So it's in there. It's just I haven't been consistently healthy enough to probably work as much as I need to, and secondly feel consistent enough on a day-to-day basis to let it all come out."

A return to Lytham, however, might bring a return of some positive feelings. Duval admits that, like the tournament itself, he has not been back to the course since his victory in 2001 - but the Duval who walks the fairways now is a very different character; a happier one, despite it all.

Duval tells young Americans to head for Europe

David Duval likes Rickie Fowler's style © Getty Images
  • On the next wave of American golfers… "The thing I love about the young American players is that they don't look like golf machines. So many of them today look like robots and look stiff and don't look like they have any feel in their game. If you go back through it and you look at world No. 1s, one of the things they had in common was that they all swung it kind of funny and different, but they all were convinced that it was the right way to do it. And you look at the Dustin Johnsons and the Rickie Fowlers, as far as Americans go, Webb Simpson … and see feel and awareness of the club face and the club head and where it is in your golf swing, and that's how you produce golf shots, repeatable golf shots, and that's how you produce good scores."
  • On changes to the PGA Tour setup, and how that might send some across the Atlantic… "If I was a young player right now, I wouldn't hesitate, I'd come play over here for a year or two is what I would do. The way the system is getting set up in the States is you're going to have to play on the Web.com Tour [the second tier tour] for a year … [so] I'd come over here and play, because if you play great golf and you get in the top 50 in the world, then you go back to the States and play the World Golf, the majors, invitationals - and then you're on Tour. And at 22, 23, 24, you get to experience the world, different cultures, get used to travel amongst different countries. I think it would be beneficial in furthering your career."

He said: "I haven't been here for 11 years. I haven't had reason to make the trip here, so it was kind of cool to see my name just on the club board, in the gold ink on the wood, along with the other tournaments they have and stuff. It makes you feel like you're kind of part of the club here."

He added, somewhat dryly: "I think I could get [a tee-time], but I don't know. I hope so. Maybe I would have to play with a member or two!"

While his golfing career has faltered, Duval's life outside the game has improved, in his words, "exponentially". He met his wife and had children after reaching professional success, and is now a different character to the wrap-around shades-wearing introvert who would barely speak in anything but monosyllabic platitudes (although the shades remain) while at the height of his fame and ability.

"Yeah, in that kind of rearview mirror, yeah, would I like to have handled things different," he acknowledged, when quizzed about his past attitude. "But that's the way I managed to do it and cope with it at that time.

"Life has opened up to me and I've seen life, and I love it and enjoy it and embrace it.

"Do I wish I could have done it a little different? Yeah, I do. But that's how I knew to do it then."

Like the player, the course at Lytham has been described as very different to past incarnations - two-time Open champion Padraig Harrington said it was "so different it's untrue" - but Duval feels the core characteristics remain the same, and consequently he has as good a chance as anyone of finishing high on the leaderboard.

"Having won here, I don't believe [it] favours a particular type of player," he said. "There are no hokey holes. It's right in front, and it's just kind of where you want to challenge, because you've got challenges with 2-iron up to driver.

"You've just got to figure out which ones you want to take on, and I think that's really neat. I like it here."

Not that he will fall further into a funk if it does not work out and he is sent packing on Friday - after all, having made two cuts on the PGA Tour all season, it is not like the odds are playing in his favour.

Duval is nevertheless a reminder to the rest of the field of what it is they are all striving for - an immortality that will endure even if the ability to play the game abruptly slips away.

"It's a neat thing," Duval said. "And that's the one thing, regardless of what happens in a player's career; you get your name on the Claret Jug as an Open champion, they can't take it off, they can't take it away.

"And one of the neat things I was told about over here, and it's the truth, is that the fans never forget. I hear dads telling their kids who weren't even born, 'That's an Open champion there, you know'.

"That's really cool."

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Alex Dimond Close
Alex Dimond is an assistant editor of ESPN.co.uk