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AT&T CLASSIC

May 14, 2008

David Duval

DULUTH, GEORGIA

DOUG MILNE: David Duval, thanks for joining us. Welcome back here. You're the '99 champion. Just a couple opening comments, kind of assess the state of your game and how you feel going into the week.
DAVID DUVAL: Well, I'm excited to be back in Atlanta. I haven't been here in quite some time. I didn't play a whole lot for a while. Scheduling hadn't allowed it, things like that, family commitments.
But I'm glad to be back. Golf is -- I'm working hard. I'm a lot closer to playing great golf than my scores indicate or have indicated up to this point, and it's just going to take that much more perseverance for me and gaining a little bit of confidence.
DOUG MILNE: You mentioned you've been working a lot with Puggy again this week.
DAVID DUVAL: Yeah, Puggy is here, I've been working with him and my dad a little bit and George Kelnhofer here in Atlanta who I've known for about 20 years now, 18 years, and just through -- basically it's been a restoration project that I've been doing for a couple years now.
I think that with the filming and video that we've checked that I've got the vast majority of it put back together, and more than anything I think some of the -- I don't want to say changes, but just putting my golf swing back together like I used to do it years ago, it's taken me a little bit of time to trust that that's not going to hurt my back anymore, because I think that's where a lot of my problems went awry with that injury, starting to swing to try not to hurt.
But it's funny, the first couple days I really did a lot of the things I wanted to do, I was really sore, my back was really sore. I got a little bit worried, thinking I may not be able to swing it like I used to, and more than anything I think it was lack of strength and endurance in my back in that particular area that was creating that soreness, and since then I really haven't had a problem, and I feel pretty good.

Q. You were renowned for the workouts you did when you were going through that great period of play. Have you had to change your workout regimen to strengthen your back?
DAVID DUVAL: You know what, about -- I think it was four -- I don't remember if it was 2003 or 2004 when I was down in Japan playing. I wasn't playing particularly great, I wasn't feeling good, everything hurt. I was in the gym just kind of doing a little bit of a workout, and I was like, you know what, this is just crazy for me to be fairly fit and healthy and to hurt this bad everywhere. And I just stopped that day, for at least two years, to try to let my body just heal. It's funny, I was just constantly sore, had constant little tweaks of pain, so I just stopped down there.
And then I've tried a little bit to get going again, and frankly, you know, I'm in the boat with a lot of people right now probably where I need to lose a few pounds again and get healthier. But it's certainly not a road I'm going to travel down to that extreme ever again, not at this point.
You know, I think that I'm going to tailor the things I do more towards golf specific and kind of try to train that way for how I swing a golf club and just generally lose 20 pounds like a lot of people like to do.

Q. How much fun is golf for you right now?
DAVID DUVAL: I probably enjoy it a lot more than people think. I've said it, and I actually do believe it, whether anybody wants to believe it or not, I think in some ways I've been tremendously blessed to taste the top of the mountain and kind of struggle at the bottom, as well, so I kind of know both spectrums of the golf game.
And for a player like myself who grew up with a dad as a pro as a country club, I never really struggled with the game. It came to me fairly naturally. Maybe some of that was some problems that I didn't know exactly what I was doing and why I hit it as well as I did. But through this process of kind of being at the bottom of the hill, I've learned a lot about my golf swing and what it takes for me to hit the golf ball well.
When I was at the top playing well and when I'm swinging well, nobody hits the golf ball any better than I do. I think I'm one of the players that -- when I was swinging great, I hit the golf ball dead straight, and when I was swinging it really, really good, it tended to fade just a little bit. So I'm just kind of working back into that way.
You know, 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. When you hear about it, it almost becomes a clichÃ©. But it's very difficult to play this game, especially professionally, if you can't eliminate half the golf course, one side of the golf course.
I've put my golf swing back together where I have physically mostly eliminated the left side again. But now do I have the patience and trust and confidence to aim it down that left side again with a creek and hit it back into the middle of the fairway on the right.
Ironically the two best drives I hit -- out of 28 drives in Charlotte, I probably hit 23 good. The two best were 18, I aimed it right down that left creek and hit it in the middle of the fairway with 8-irons into the green, the hardest driving hole on the course.
It's right there, it's just time and patience.

Q. This week's tournament happens to be just outside of Atlanta, but is this a place you feel a certain comfort level, having spent a lot of time in this city?
DAVID DUVAL: It felt kind of foreign to me yesterday actually when I got here. It's been so long since I've been to Atlanta. The answer is yes, there is a lot of comfort with this area with me, but kind of the way -- even since I've been back, the way it's grown and changed is really incredible.
But I certainly have close ties with this golf tournament, with Dave Kaplan and with this town as far as I went to school here. Dave let me play as a college kid, trusted and gave me a chance, and I made him look kind of smart that year.
I've told him every time I see him, I will play whenever I can play. I'll always play here when I can. Last several years I haven't much played, and this year I saw him, I don't know, two months ago, and said, I'm coming, it's on the schedule.

Q. Looking back here when you won in 1999 and that whole period when you were so successful, you said you don't know necessarily what you were doing right, but what you've learned since, if you could go back and talk to the David Duval of 1999 and 2000 with what you know now, what would you tell him?
DAVID DUVAL: I would probably say, first and foremost -- I think this is the most important lesson I've learned, and I've said it already, but it's worth saying lots and lots of times over, and hopefully -- I'm sure a lot of people know, but hopefully maybe a lot of the players don't know it, but I think I feel like I've learned that in my opinion the most valuable thing you have to protect is your confidence.
I think that had I known that I may not have been as reluctant or stubborn to seek help kind of after I had gotten hurt and when I started coming back again, although I think I won my first tournament after I came back, after I got really hurt. I would have monitored my golf swing and golf game that much more closely to make sure I wasn't coming back and starting bad habits, and I think that's kind of what I did, and that's where the erosion of confidence will come from.
DOUG MILNE: David, as always, we appreciate your time, and best of luck this week.

End of FastScripts

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