Duval Makes Return, for Now

He was dressed in black, but David Duval’s mood did not match the color of his shirt Wednesday at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. On the day before the U.S. Open began, Duval showed up to say a few words, play a practice round and get ready for his first tournament since he walked away from it all in October.

He smiled easily and often, but he also seemed on the verge of tears a couple of times as he explained why he left and why he has come back, at least for one week.

But the day didn’t start off so great for Duval. Playing a practice round with Davis Love III and Fred Couples, Duval’s tee shot at the first hole hooked left and struck a spectator in the head on one hop.

Duval dropped another ball and swung another three-wood, sending the ball straight down the middle of the fairway.

It was pure Duval, at one time or another tragically flawed and then again unerringly precise, a combination that makes him an irresistible attraction for this U.S. Open.

At this point, we’re not sure which Duval is going to show up today, the one that made four cuts last year and has plummeted to 434th in the rankings, or the Duval who won the 2001 British Open, who once shot a 59 and who is the last player besides Tiger Woods to be ranked No. 1.

Duval dropped only a few hints Wednesday. Apparently, he doesn’t know either.

He said he was “very nervous” and “scared,” but he wasn’t talking about the rigors of playing the U.S. Open at a very difficult venue. He was talking about being on the golf course again after an extended absence, which he used to sort out his life and arrange his priorities.

Before he walked away after missing the cut last year at Las Vegas, Duval’s goal was to see how good he could become. He found out and didn’t like what he discovered.

“Through winning a lot of tournaments, through going to No. 1, through winning the British Open, I figured it out,” he said. “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.”

As for why he’s back now, Duval had a simple answer. He feels like it.

He realized he was ready to come back on Saturday when he was playing by himself at Cherry Hills in Denver, where he lives with his wife of four months. Duval said he hasn’t practiced once since the day he missed the cut at Las Vegas, but he plays about four or five times a week.

“A lot of the thing that’s been missing for me for a long time has been the enjoyment of being out here,” he said.

“It kind of hit me Saturday night that I just wanted to go play, for no other reason than I just felt like I was ready to go have some fun and enjoy it again. Up to that point, I hadn’t wanted to play.”

At 32, Duval has 13 victories on the PGA Tour and ranks 10th on the all-time earnings list with $16.2 million. In an 18-month span that began in October 1997, Duval won 11 times.

When he won the 1999 Players Championship, he supplanted Woods as the No. 1 player in the world.

And when he won the 2001 British Open at Royal Lytham, Duval had his first major championship.

He said there would be more. It hasn’t turned out that way. In fact, he hasn’t won since.

It has been a swift and precipitous drop for Duval, from major-title winner and top-ranked player to a player who couldn’t find the fairway and struggled to make the cut.

He remains popular with the fans and he is not without his backers in the locker room, including Woods, Couples, Love, Sergio Garcia, Mark O’Meara, Jim Furyk and Billy Andrade. One by one, they called Duval and offered support.

So that’s the way it is for Duval, whose comeback may end Friday if he misses the cut. He wouldn’t even qualify to be in the U.S. Open if not for a five-year exemption he earned for his victory at Royal Lytham, but Duval isn’t sure where or when he’ll tee it up again, regardless of what happens at Shinnecock.

“You know, the life on this tour is long, it’s hard and it’s lonely and I’ve been doing this for a long, long time,” he said. “In some sense, to be honest with you, I haven’t missed it.”

He said he just wanted to play this week. And for this week, that’s all the expectations he has. If he is nervous or scared, that’s just being honest, and being honest is one game in which he always makes the cut.