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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIPMay 12, 2011David DuvalPONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA DAVID DUVAL: I played okay. That's about all I can say. Nothing great. Had a few shots, couple putts kind of kept me together. Nothing special, that's for sure. Q. Where do you feel like your progress is here this year? You feeling like you're taking steps forward? DAVID DUVAL: I think I've made it perfectly clear on more than one occasion that I feel good about what I'm doing. I don't feel like I've gotten very much out of it, out of my game. I haven't scored particularly well this year, but I feel like for the most part I've played well. Q. You said there were a couple of putts that held you together out there, any specific ones? DAVID DUVAL: Just kind of here and there at times. A few shots you hit. I had a nice kind of putt on 18 for birdie from about 12 feet. I made a putt for par on 7 from maybe 18 or 20 feet, so just couple things like that. Q. Was it nice being back out here and playing competitively? DAVID DUVAL: Yeah, it's been nice. I was in Charlotte and missed the cut, came down on Saturday, and came out and played a few holes that day. Family got in that afternoon. It's been nice hanging at the beach and finding sharks teeth and playing a little bit of golf. Q. Is it hard for you to fathom that it's actually been five years since you've played competitively here? DAVID DUVAL: Yeah. I don't really know how to answer that because it feels like it's been forever, but also it's hard to believe it's been that long. I know that's not a good answer at all, but it's hard to believe it's been since '06. Q. Having the experience you have here, how much does that matter when you play this golf course? We see a lot of guys like yourself up there for a while today. David Toms, Mark O'Meara. How much does experience equate to success? DAVID DUVAL: Well, the experience is a great thing to have, but you also need to be playing fairly well. You can have all the experience in the world and playing poorly and it doesn't matter. But it helps, I think, to know how to get around the golf course, how to shape certain tee shots, to take advantage of the curve of the holes and the terrain and things like that. You know, I certainly have some, but more than a lot and less than some. Q. Last time when you won here this was a completely different golf course than it is now. Can you just kind of tell us how different it is to you? DAVID DUVAL: Well, you know, obviously the weather's a little different. Then you have the surface itself, the grass is entirely different. And although the greens are getting pretty hard and pretty fast, the fairways are still kind of soft. Hopefully that can get changed and get those a little harder and faster too. The year I won, the year Lee Janzen won, I think '95, maybe, when it was just incredibly hard, incredibly fast, I think that's kind of how this golf course is supposed to be. I don't think the fairways are quite where she should be. Q. Are the greens harder than those greens that year? DAVID DUVAL: That's, yeah, you could probably pull out a couple Open Championships or U.S. Opens here and there that might rival that, but as far as competitively, that's about as severe as we've seen. Q. One quote I've seen quite a bit from you in stories the last three or four years is "I'm close." But the result with the exception of the U.S. Open and you had a tournament out in California where I think Dustin Johnson beat you out at Pebble. DAVID DUVAL: Right. Q. It hasn't shown close, at least on Sunday. DAVID DUVAL: Right. Q. How eager are you to get that feeling back of just especially now with your kids old enough to know what it would be like? DAVID DUVAL: Yeah, it's obviously something that I have planned on doing, I've been striving to do. It's why I've continued to work. But at the same time, my answers to those questions last year or the year before were that I was close to playing well. I feel like I'm playing well now. I wouldn't say close. I'm playing well. I try not to get too ahead of myself because I know I'm playing well. If anything this year, I've hurt myself by pressing too much and forcing it too much. So I'm doing the best I can not to do that. Q. Can you actually get a feel for how much people want to see you back in the winner's circle again? DAVID DUVAL: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I see it most every week: I have a very true, dear fans, that's for sure. I've been very blessed that way. And I certainly know it week-in and week-out where I play there seem to be a lot of folks pulling for me. Q. Is it more acute here? DAVID DUVAL: If it is, it's marginal. The receptions I've received really everywhere I've played has been incredible, incredible to me. I'm asked why a lot, and you know, I don't have the answers for that. That's for you guys to figure out. I think it's that much a little more here. But it's also there's a lot more people I know. But just in general, at the tournaments, I seem to be having a lot of folks pulling for me. Q. What do you think? I was just wondering if you know or see at all when a guy like Mark O'Meara, whom you played against a lot over the years, you see him up on the leaderboard and see that he shot 6-under today? DAVID DUVAL: I didn't know that until we finished. So I think that that is a great example of why this is one of the greatest tournaments in the world, because it truly does not favor any player. The way the course is set up year-in and year-out, the way the routing is, the way the holes play short, long, it doesn't matter. Good golf comes through here. Q. How do you look -- 2-under is under par, but how do you look at today versus going into tomorrow? DAVID DUVAL: Well, we had pretty tough conditions out there this afternoon. It was blowing pretty good at times. I don't know what it was like in the morning, but typically it's more still in the mornings. Maybe the greens will be a touch more receptive, we'll see. But again, here you can't ever get ahead of yourself because it's real quick to make a 6 or 7 then when you do. So I'll do what I did today, and I'll hit it and hopefully it will go straight. Sometimes it won't, and then I'll go hit it again. Q. Like the rest of us. DAVID DUVAL: Yeah. Q. Anything besides sharks teeth you were looking for? DAVID DUVAL: Found some turtle shells, some old fossilized turtle shells and some bones, found one starfish so far. I'm trying to think of what other cool things we got. My son's the best. He's probably found 200 shark teeth already this week. Q. Has he been out here before? DAVID DUVAL: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. He picks up 50 or 80 a day. Q. How old is he? DAVID DUVAL: Six. Q. What's he going to do with all these? DAVID DUVAL: He takes them back, and the kids love them. They keep them. My little girl finds them. She found 20 of them this morning, probably, 10 of them. Thanks. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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