WHAT IS surprising is we don’t see more of this. Sporting excellence can be so difficult to attain, so complicated to maintain, and for a hundred different reasons. Steve Blass is a World Series hero one minute, a scatter-armed chucker the next. One day Penny Hardaway is the most marketable star in pro basketball, the next he struggles to limp up and down the court.
Ten years ago, David Duval was the best golfer in the world, even at a time when the world already contained a young rival named Tiger. He was cool and efficient, an assassin on Sunday afternoons, taking aim at the world from behind wraparound sunglasses. He shot 59 one Sunday at the Hope. In 2001, he won the British Open. It was his 13th win on Tour. He was 29.
He is 37 now, still stuck on 13. He has been injured; broken up with a longtime fiancée; married Susie, who made him an instant father of three (adding a fourth together not long ago); endured a lawsuit with a former sponsor; taken time away from the game to try to fall back in love with it. And has never approached where he was in 1999, when it was easy to envision Duval, and not Phil Mickelson, as Tiger Woods’ foil for the foreseeable future.
New York knows the story. And though no one in the Open field may approach Mickelson’s fair-haired status among the locals, Bethpage Black has been loud and loving of its support of Duval across his first 36 holes. And don’t think Duval, the former ice prince, hasn’t been affected.
“How could you not be?” Duval asked yesterday morning, after he finished off a remarkable two-day run in which he went as low as 3-under, crashed back to even par, then clawed all the way back to 3-under with a birdie on No. 18, finishing in a tie for fourth place, five shots back of Ricky Barnes. “It’s very loud and vocal, and I’m just happy I’m giving them a good show so far. And I’m hoping to give them a good show for a couple more days.”
With Mickelson scuffling near par, with Woods struggling yesterday just to climb inside the cut line, Duval is precisely the pet project the Bethpage galleries will latch onto in delight. And who would have guessed that? When Duval was at the top of his game, on top of the world, he was like a robot in Foot-Joys, and nobody falls in love with robots.
But that was an entire golfing lifetime ago, in so many ways. It is hard to pinpoint precisely when Duval’s game hit rock-bottom, because in many ways he’s been scraping it for years. In his last 50 events, he has one top-20 finish. He made just 34 cuts in his past 120 tournaments before Bethpage.
He hasn’t had a top-10 in six years. And he has playing privileges on Tour this year only by invoking a one-time-only exemption afforded members of the top 50 all-time money list.
And yet, he is having fun again. He is happy as a family man, even if no one in that family was in his life when he ruled the sport. He is happy playing a role of darkhorse.
“I do love playing the game,” he said. “I love competing. But more than that, I’d really like for my wife and my family to see how I can actually play this game. They haven’t seen me at my best and I want them to.”
Will that happen this weekend? Golf is cruel, and has been cruel to Duval. A few years ago at the Masters, he was the Thursday leader but missed the cut Friday.
Duval’s own career can testify to the game’s whims. But he is perched on a leaderboard again, and his galleries are loud and swollen, and how could he ever have guessed any of that was possible a year ago? Or a week ago?
“I’ll just keep plugging along,” he said, knowing the New York galleries, for as long as this Open lasts, will stay plugged in, too. For him.