I’m not an avid golf fan but I do watch most of the big tournaments and others that have interesting match ups. During one of the commercials in today’s final round of the Doral they showed a quick shot of David Duvall. Whatever happened to him? Wasn’t he at one time the number one ranked player in the world? Did he get injured or something?
Also, Mickelson’s a loser. He had at least 3 good chances to beat Woods.
"Duval has been dissected as often as Woods. Why did he disappear? Injuries? Emotions? When will he be back? Who does he think he is trying to make his first tournament back the U.S. Open?
Did anyone think that this wasn’t about what they thought, but rather about Double D? About a man who, at 32, was trying to understand who he is and what’s important? About a man whose world crashed in after winning the 2001 British Open?
‘I look back and feel like if I made a mistake,’ he said. 'Through it all, my mistake was I had what I thought was a pretty broad goal but it turned out to be pretty narrow, and that was simply to see how good I could become in this game.
‘Through winning a lot of tournaments through going to No. 1 through winning the Open, I figured it out. You know, if anything, a week removed from the Open Championship is when I went through my existentialist moments of kind of, ‘Is this it?’ and that’s the simplest way to put it.’
We’ll never know everything he has dealt with over the past three years. Or past eight months. And we shouldn’t. Some things are personal."
At the level of the PGA tour, golf is putting and putting is mostly in the head. All of the golfers, or at least those who have any chance to win, can get from tee to green without difficulty. When the putting goes, the game goes as far as winning on the tour is concerned. When Jack Nicklaus was on top he could make just about any putt that he absolutely had to make. Not all of them, of course, but a high percentage of them. As he got older the old nerves were not that good any more and he couldn’t do it any more and he disappeared as a factor on the tour.
Peter Allis, who now announces, was once great and he said that in his last couple of seasons his mental game in putting was so shot that sometimes he couldn’t pull the trigger and had to back away and start over. Sooner or later it gets all of them and they can’t make the putts any more. It happened to Duval early and than blew the rest of his game. He now has trouble breaking 80 on the courses they play.
Thanks David. Man that really is sad. This guy was the number one player in the world (I think) and now he can’t break 80. Did this happen all at once or was it a slow deterioration? Would you happen to know if he’s still trying or has he just given up the ghost?
BTW I didn’t mean to sound snarky about Mickelson. I like the guy but from the very beginning it just didn’t seem like he could do it.
I suspect that he won’t make it back. It seemed to happen rather quickly. I noticed the very next year after the British Open win that he wasn’t making the 5 and 6 foot putts very often. Those are the ones you just have to make a reasonable percentage of - certainly more than half and more likely around 70-75% or you are an also ran on the PGA tour.
The difference between being a good golfer and a bad golfer is pretty small.
Duval did have a wrist injury and he also had some contractual disputes with sponsors and he got off track. If he were a little bit more personable, he could look into a broadcasting career. Worked for Ian Baker-Finch.
The difference between a good golfer and a bad golfer isn’t so small. However, the difference between a million dollar golfer and a 100K golfer on the PGA tour is indeed small.
We had a young guy from here who was a super golfer. He tried out for the PGA tour and made the second tier tour. He lasted one year and what he said was that he thought he was a good putter but found out he wasn’t and also if he missed the green a little on approach whots he couldn’t get on the green in one and in the hole in one more nearly often enough.
I’m not so sure this is true. The importance of putting vs. driving is mainly arithmetic. Par on a golf course allows 2 putts/hole or 36 opportunities to save strokes. Since there are usually 4 par three holes there are only 14 drives. In addition I think it is easier to recover from a bad drive than from a bad putt. A two foot putt missed is gone forever. A bad drive can be followed by a good next shot leaving a chance to make par or ever birdie (1 under par) on the hole.
However, good driving is still important because you are left with an easier second shot. And on part 5 holes driving is doubly important. It has gotten so on the PGA tour if you make par on a par 5 you have lost a stroke to the tournament leaders. All of the top players are on par 5’s in two shots with a putt for an eagle (2 under par) and virtually a cinch birdie. There is even a chance for an occasional double eagle (3 under par) by having the second shot go in the hole.
Maybe it has something to do with the British Open? Ian Baker-Finch was another golfer who famously “lost his game” after winning the British Open in 1991. He was never the level of Duval’s former self to start with, but he’s now strictly a golf commentator.
I remember reading a SI article about him a few years back, probably back when he started his commentator job, I think. After his troubles started, people would come up to him and give him tips and he’d try them to try to fix his problems. Eventually he tried so many different variations to fix his initial problem it got to the point where he lost his old swing entirely.
Ian seems to take his troubles in good humor and has landed on his feet, Duval not so much, at least not yet. Poor guy.
So true. Tiger won on Sunday by one stroke, and look at how many tough (lucky?) putts he made. Phil could have won, and was obviously, majorly pissed he didn’t, and it all came down to putting. I still can’t believe he missed that par putt on the 16th.
OTOH, over at Dubai, you have Enie winning with an eagle on the last hole. He had a monster drive that gave him only a 6 iron to the green, while Jimemez had a 3-wood for his second shot. Both hit the green, but Ernie made his putt, and Jimenez 3-putted. So, was it driving or putting that made a difference? Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate. Overall, though, putting is the key.
As for Duval, he did claim to be suffering from vertigo, and given how importance balance is to a good swing, I can see how that could destroy your game. He doesn’t talk about the vertigo anymore, so I don’t know what the deal is. It is sad to see him struggle. At some point he’ll probably just give it up and try to be successful at something else.
How long does the Open win give himi an exemption-- 5 or 10 years? Once that’s up, he’s toast.
With the improvement in equipment, it certainly does help a lot on the PGA Tour to drive the ball far. You don’t want to be playing a hole driver-8 iron while another guy is playing it driver-wedge.
As an avid golfer and follower of the game, I’ll try to sum it up, it’s not any one thing.
Duval (one L) is considered a very complex, introverted kind of guy. With losing his older brother at age 9 to a form of cancer (which ultimately resulted in his parent’s divorce), and being a chunky college player, Duval had basically grown up with golf as his crutch, so-to-speak. After slimming down and firing up the golf course, he found himself at number one and could not/did not want the hype that came with it.
Taking some time off, he found he liked being out of the spotlight, even if some of the leisure activities (snowboarding, skiing) could impact his golf game. Which it did, a back injury put him out for awhile, then he tried to come back too vigorously and hurt his wrist. Then the lawsuit with the Acushnet really seemed to push him over the edge. The catalyst came when his fiancee of seven years left him and he really seemed to shift into a “Don’t give a f—” attitude.
Now he seems determined to make a comeback on his own terms. Golf is not his life anymore, although he would like to play regularly and well. He’s married to a divorcee, and has an instant family with her three kids. He’s planning on playing a full twenty events, if he’s playing relatively well (for now). He’s taken about 18 months off, so, we will see. He’s played in five events this year, W/D in one, missed the cut in the other four, but his scores are starting to come down.