Duval still looking to turn it around -- within limits

DULUTH, Ga. — Once, when he was alone on his own island like one of those big Easter Island heads, David Duval seemed just about as stony. His trademark Oakleys filtered out everything that didn't pertain to the breaking of par. He would not be satisfied until he had taught golf to roll over and play dead, and he had attained the body fat percentage of a rutabaga.

Wednesday, Duval was rubbing the middle-age mound that has bloomed beneath his golf shirt, saying he had a good 20 pounds to lose.

"But not here," (patting a thigh). "Or here," (backside). Never again is he going to mess with the foundation, he said.

Or there, for that matter, out in Denver where the former Georgia Tech star has established the enduring foundation with his wife and five children.

"What we see [on the course] now depends on David and how much he wants to be a top competitor again," said Puggy Blackmon, who coached him at Tech and is working with him again. "But it's not going to come at the expense of his family."

Golf's most famous riches-to-rags story has come to Sugarloaf this week. In the late 1990s, Duval was the top-ranked player in the world. And on into the 2000s, he was the man most likely to give Tiger Woods hives.

He arrived at Thursday's first round of the AT&T Classic ranked No. 926 (who knew they bothered to count that high?).

He would have lost his Tour Card and full playing privileges this season if not for a special hardship exemption — he missed much of last year to be with his wife during a difficult pregnancy. Duval has yet to make the cut in seven events. He withdrew from another. It has been nearly seven years since he won the British Open and then began a competitive fade that baffled the sport. He hasn't had so much as a top-10 finish since 2002.

Thursday's rain-shortened first round offered little comfort. Erratic off the tee, he was in the woods enough to earn at least two merit badges, but only a three-over 39 after nine holes. That's as far as he made it before play was suspended. That was a snapshot of how his year has gone. In 17 full rounds, Duval is a combined 62-over-par.Another of the many curious aspects to Duval's story is that the further he has gotten away from his golfing savant days, the closer he has come to the human part of the program. There has been a big thaw in his image from the days he was considered one of the coldest, most aloof cats out there.

"We fought that image thing for a long time," Blackmon said. "I don't know how many people have come up to me and said, 'We're really pulling for David.' Where were they before? He's like the Rocky of the PGA Tour."

"You're our hometown hero," a spectator told him in passing Thursday, with more enthusiasm than accuracy. Duval is long gone from Atlanta and is not likely to come back until there's two feet of fresh powder on Stone Mountain.

The old Duval may have stopped for dinner at a Waffle House, as when he got into town late Tuesday. But he wouldn't have joked about it.

"Eggs, chicken, toast, grits and a double order of hash browns. Got to have a double order of hash browns," he said, reciting the night's fare.

Duval's come to the same conclusion as a lot of other 36-year-old men: He's not going to be a slave to the weight room ever again. Although, "Frankly, I'm in the boat with a lot of people where I need to lose a few pounds again and get healthier," he confessed.

He's had multiple common-man moments. This is the winner of 13 PGA Tour titles, a major, and nearly $17 million speaking: "I faced a problem that thousands and thousands of golfers have faced. I'd get on the tee and I wouldn't know where to aim because I didn't know if I was going to hit it right or left or straight."

Oh, he says he is serious about reacquiring a champion's game. Specifically, Blackmon stepped aside as the South Carolina golf coach last season to begin working more with Duval and some other select pupils. Also, Duval has picked back up again with Atlanta instructor George Kelnhofer, who is trying to restore the swing as he knew it 18 years ago.

Despite no tangible signs of improvement, both Blackmon and Duval say he is much closer to a breakthrough than people may know. And when asked if he has any shot of making the $785,000 he'd need to make this year to retain his Tour card for next season, Duval expresses no doubt.

"To me that's a foregone conclusion," he said, despite having earned nothing so far.

The theories and explanations for Duval's plummet from the top are plentiful and well documented. Back problems set the decline in motion, but more existential matters deepened it. Not long after Duval had won the British Open, he couldn't help the thought, "Is that all there is?"

There was more, he discovered, when he married Susie Persichitte in 2004, gaining an immediate family with her three children from a previous marriage. They since have added two more to the bunch. Eventually, this comeback will come down to how badly he wants to take back what he lost and whether he can do it while keeping family as priority No. 1.

"I've done the work," Duval said. "My family's behind me. It's a matter at this point to have the gumption to keep on fighting, keep on playing. I don't need to see the light, I feel like I'm immersed in it again. I just need to go and gain confidence."

However this effort goes, don't mourn the champion who has misplaced his game.

"[Duval's] a good man, he's well-read, he's smart," said fellow player Paul Goydos. "I think he's as happy as he's ever been in his life with his family situation. Sometimes I think we overrate the importance of hitting a little white ball around a big grass field."

Steve Hummer writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.