But Duval has discovered that his game–and his life–can work with a less rigid approach. He no longer stalks the course, but rather strides it purposefully. He’ll always be something of a stoic, but he is making an effort, taking fans’ grievances about his demeanor to heart. So of late he has begun taking the glasses off, at least in one place: the winner’s circle. Since Duval has practically lived there for more than a year, folks have gotten a good look into his baby blues. And they’ve discovered they like the man, and they love his game.
Last year Duval outearned Tiger Woods, today’s measure of golf superstardom, with a record $2.6 million (Tiger won $1.84 million) and nipped him for the Vardon Trophy, representing the best strokes-per-round average on the tour. Since his first pro win, in October 1997, Duval has won nine PGA events, including triumphs in his first two outings this year. First he crushed an elite field in the Mercedes Open by nine strokes; then he won the Bob Hope Classic with a record final-round 59.
Next week he goes up against Tiger and the 62 other top-ranked players in the world in the World Golf Championships event outside San Diego, featuring head-to-head match play for a $1 million first prize. While Duval will be seeded No. 2, behind Tiger, he has become the man to beat every time he tees off. Woods even joked recently that Duval should spot him a shot per nine holes. And Fred Funk, a top pro, neatly summed up the tour’s current thinking on Duval “There’s no question right now he’s the best in the world. He’s just going to beat you with pure talent.” About the only question left is when Duval will win his first major, one of the game’s Big Four tournaments. The Masters is coming up in April, and we might just find out that baby blues go well with the winner’s green jacket.
Duval has all the strokes, from tee to green. He hits towering, 300-yard drives and is a demon putter. But what sets him apart is his mastery of golfs great equalizer, the mental game. “He’s so clearly a thinking player, and that’s what will keep him doing very well for a long time,” says legend Arnold Palmer. Duval never overreacts to a shot, good or bad. He now understands the tournaments are 72-hole marathons and doesn’t try to compensate for a mistake with an immediate miracle shot. “He simply won’t let anything bother him,” says Dr. Bob Rotella, a sports psychologist who’s worked with Duval for 10 years. “He’s patient, he trusts himself and his commitment to excel is truly mind-boggling.” Of late, Duval has even boggled his own mind. He finds himself in the best playing groove the tour’s seen in decades. “It’s when you’re so focused on what you’ve got to do and you execute it so perfectly that you don’t even remember hitting the ball,” he says.
Personally, the man behind the glasses has matured as well. He now travels with his longtime girlfriend, and the two prefer quiet evenings of reading and TV. “You have to be a bear to get where you want to go in this game,” Duval says. “But I never thought I was [arrogant]. Apparently, though, I was perceived that way.” These days he occasionally looks like he’s having fun on the course, even signing autographs during play in a recent competition. When he sank an eight-footer on the 18th for the record 59 and the victory, his gyrations equaled any NBA star’s three-point celebration. Still, Duval downplays any rivalry with the more mediagenic Woods, saying, “Tiger deserves everything he gets. Because of him, we’re all getting more exposure.”
Though his recent run has brought him newfound fame and visibility (he has deals with Titleist, Tommy Hilfiger, Oakley and Charles Schwab, among others), Duval doesn’t covet the limelight. Even as a child, he was a decided counterpoint to his gregarious, glad-handing dad, Bob, then a club pro in Jacksonville, Fla. His loner’s bent was accentuated by the death of his 12-year-old brother, Brent, from aplastic anemia, a blood disease. David, who was 9 at the time, was the donor for his brother’s bone-marrow transplant. The transplant took, but David’s healthy white blood cells attacked his brother’s body, a common and sometimes fatal complication. “David went through hell,” says his father. “Try telling a 9-year-old that his bone marrow worked, but his brother died. He got very serious after that.”
He got very serious about golf, too, playing at the club where his father worked. By the time he got to Georgia Tech, David was a formidable talent with an attitude. His coach, Puggy Blackmon, would chauffeur Duval to team matches alone to prevent the overly hyper youngster from rattling his teammates. “He walked on a golf course like he was the only one there,” says Blackmon. But the self-absorption paid off in matches. “The bigger jackass he was [before], the better he seemed to play.” Duval could be prickly in his personal relationships, too. He had a falling out with his father in the mid-’90s after his dad divorced and remarried. “I didn’t necessarily agree with a lot of the choices he was making,” says David. But when Bob qualified for the Senior PGA Tour in late 1997, David surprise d him by flying to California to caddie for him at his first tournament.
No one will be surprised when Duval sheds that hoary golf label: best player never to win a major. He lost by only a shot at the ‘98 Masters. “Golf can be a fickle game,” he says. “To win a major, a lot of things have to go your way at exactly the right time.” That challenge is less daunting, though, when everything is going your way virtually all the time. And right now, nobody is playing from a better lie.
