Scoring finally catching up his ball-striking, says Duval

Despite a lackluster start to 2009, David Duval has been confident that his game was coming around. He's stayed patient through the delays, and is pleased to be playing so well on a course he loves.

By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM Chief of Correspondents

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. -- More than once this season, David Duval has said that the scores he's shooting aren't indicative of the way he's hitting the ball.

When you've missed eight cuts, though, and your best finish is that tie for 55th at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, it's hard to make people believe you're actually playing well.
 
At the midway point of the rain-plagued 109th U.S. Open, though, the numbers Duval has been putting on his scorecard finally appear to have caught up to the confidence he has in his game. He's tied for fourth at 3 under after an opening 67 and that extremely resilient 70 he completed on Saturday morning after making four bogeys in his first six holes.

"I feel like I'm controlling the golf ball well, hitting it good," Duval said. "In the first round, I did what you need to do, simple recipe, hit the ball in play and knock it on the green."

Even while he was stumbling early in his second round -- which actually was late on Friday evening as the USGA raced to use every available minute of daylight after Thursday's near-washout -- Duval stayed committed to his game plan. He said he was never "flustered" and he just kept "plugging" along.

"I wasn't hitting it all over the place and hitting bad shots," Duval said. "That's how it added up over that stretch of holes. I was very comfortable where I was hitting and just tried to ... focus that much more from then on."

Sometimes easier said than done, of course. But Duval, who had to qualify for the U.S. Open for the first time in 14 years, was particularly determined to play at Bethpage Black, where he missed the cut in 2002. 

"Forever, I've never made bones about it, I think the two Opens are the most important events of the year," Duval said. "The Masters is its own entity and the PGA (Championship) is kind of in the same boat I think, but the two Opens are events to which everyone has access, technically, and then to come back up here was very important to me."

That said, maybe it's fitting, too. The 2001 British Open champ has effectively turned into one of golf's everymen after tumbling from No. 1 in the world in 1999 to No. 882 as of last week. The 13-time PGA TOUR champion hasn't had a top-10 finish since he tied for sixth at the 2002 Invensys Classic at Las Vegas -- a period of 115 starts.

Duval's battled back and shoulder injuries during that drought, which has been marked by what he acknowledges is a crisis in confidence. Things got so bad in 2005 that Duval missed 16 straight cuts and 18 overall. He only cashed one check for $7,360 that year after a tie for 60th at the Valero Texas Open.

There have been good times, too, though. Duval got married, and his wife Susie came with a ready-made family of three children to which the couple has added two more. He's extremely content with his life outside the ropes, which has made him want to play better once he's inside.

"I love playing the game," Duval 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."

Duval, the Georgia Tech product who is one of only four four-time first-team All-Americans in NCAA history, said he started gaining confidence at the end of the West Coast swing. That confidence was challenged when he missed the cut in his next six events, though, as those pesky scores lacked the prowess of his game. 

"Patience is crucial in this game, and I feel like I have been patient for many years," Duval said. "... If anything my patience, I feel, is most tested over the last six, eight, 10 months when I really felt like everything was falling together but nothing good was happening for me.

"I started gaining confidence and really, my day in Columbus (at the sectional qualifying) was a big boost for me because I had put that much more pressure on myself to qualify to get here," he added. "So I probably made it that much harder but I managed to control myself and play really well that day and get in."

And his performance this week at Bethpage certainly should give Duval something else to build on.