THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 20, 2001

David Duval

DAVID DUVAL: Well, it's the biggest event of the year, I think, and the toughest event to win. So it's exciting to be playing again. I'm looking forward to the weekend. Sorry I'm a little late this morning. I went to the ocean to check out the surf. It was pretty big this morning. No, I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully everything is fine. My wrist is not 100%, but I'm going to play and see what happens.

DAVID DUVAL: No, I don't think it adds more pressure. Where would I rank it? Probably, I'd say first as quality of field. Probably second, counting the prestige of the event. Third is the golf course. And the purse is in there somewhere, as well. But, I think it is -- a lot is made of the purse here. But personally, and I don't know if you've asked the other players, if they would tell you the same thing, but I don't even know what it is this year. I know they keep it high and keep it as the leader of all of the events. But it is more the golf tournament than anything else.

DAVID DUVAL: Well, I haven't had one, but that's not to say I won't. I'm talking with the doctor I've been seeing, Bruce Steinberg and Mike Ryan, all of the symptoms I've shown them and have described and the work they helped with. They are pretty confident that it is just tendonitis. And Bruce has seen a lot of it. He kind of feels that at times MRI's can give you too much information and can muddy the waters a little bit. You might see something that's some inflammation or something in a different spot that really isn't a problem; it's simply caused by the tendonitis. The plan, I talked last night with them, is play golf this week. If it goes backwards and gets worse, then I'll have an MRI next week.

DAVID DUVAL: I will. That's personally my last resort to play at Augusta.

DAVID DUVAL: No.

DAVID DUVAL: I'm not so sure that the venue is open, is it? It is.

DAVID DUVAL: I'm planning on it.

DAVID DUVAL: Why?

DAVID DUVAL: You weigh that with the fact that I have not been able to play a whole lot of golf in the last six or seven weeks -- so, it's a tough decision. But, you know, there again, like I said, that's based off of what happens this week. If it continues to get better like it has been, then I don't see any reason, nor do Dr. Steinberg or Mike, to.

DAVID DUVAL: Mm-hmm.

DAVID DUVAL: It's actually probably healing fairly rapidly, but it's like anything. When I first saw them, the first thing he said was: If you were not an athlete trying to compete, first thing I would tell you is, you know, sling it up in three or four weeks and let it heal and let everything go away. But your time frame is ten days, so, you know, it makes it a little harder.

DAVID DUVAL: I hope so. I mean, I can't tell you until Thursday or Friday, Saturday are over with. I don't know. I see no reason why, you know, a pain in my wrist would cause me to swing the golf club poorly. You know, it's not like it's -- you know, it's kind of more of a nuisance at the moment. That might change after hitting a couple shots out of the rough or something. I don't know. I have no idea.

DAVID DUVAL: Well, most of the tweaking that has occurred in the last 18 months has been unconscious due to, I think, compensation for a back that was bothering me for quite some time. Now, you know, really, the things I feel like I kind of hit on ten days ago or whatever it is now, two weeks ago, wasn't anything, any major changes, and simply just turning away from the golf ball better than I was, as opposed to kind of rolling my hands away. And that let me keep the golf club on plane for the whole swing, and that's something that I had not been doing for quite some time. You know, I can sit here and tell you why I think so, but I don't know. I think it is based off of the back and the film I've seen and video of tournaments, even back to the beginning of January of 2000, I wasn't swinging well. I was making some compensations in my address and take-away to kind of swing around on my back, it seems. Now that's not an issue. It's easier for me to stand up and swing like I normally would.

DAVID DUVAL: When I'm swinging well, I try to work on timing. That's all I'm doing. You know, just trying to be patient in the golf swing and let the club sit at the top, and go from there.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't see why it would be more pressure. Having not won this event, maybe it would be. But, you know, it's a golf tournament, and it's one of the biggest events of the year, and it just happens to be where I live. So I treat it like any other, though, except that I get to stay at home.

DAVID DUVAL: What do you think?

DAVID DUVAL: It stinks. It's not fun. It seems like I kind of have gotten into a little flow of bad things. It's kind of funny, I was actually, if anything, laughing about what happened that day when I hurt my wrist, because it was like, you know, you've got to be kidding me. It's one more thing. You know, the first thought I had was, you know, I don't think anybody is going to believe me. (Laughter.) I think everybody is going to think I hurt my back. I was like -- you know ... But the best way I can look at it, there's no way that you can keep going. There's no way. I'm looking forward to that upside here soon.

DAVID DUVAL: That's kind of a broad, what do you mean, the second part of your question? That's very broad.

DAVID DUVAL: The equipment is -- I'm very excited about the equipment, the golf ball, the golf clubs I'm using. It's exactly what I want. The other stuff, you know, I can't talk about it. I'm not going to talk about it anymore. I mean, it's, as I've said before, it's in the court's hand. And somebody is talking about it somewhere because I see a lot of articles and a lot of "sources close to" yada, yada, yada. No sources in my camp, if you will, like everybody is saying, but somebody is talking about it, and I've got a pretty good idea who, but I'm not going to say. And I don't mean on my side.

DAVID DUVAL: It was kind of what you said, but not completely what you said. It was probably just overuse of a lot of practice the week of Honda, that's all. I had hit so many golf balls, it just kind of gave out.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't know. I haven't even -- I haven't even thought about the Masters a lot. I've got more pressing things right now, this week playing well, and hopefully I'm feeling good. Maybe we can talk about it next week or the week after when we actually get there. But, you know, maybe we should say 60 or 70 guys should look to stop me, I don't know. (Smiles.)

DAVID DUVAL: That's true. Semi-retirement.

DAVID DUVAL: Well, yes and no. I mean, I guess I am fairly -- I'm not as prepared as I would like to be. But at the same time, last time I came back from ten weeks off, I won a golf tournament. It's actually, I guess, the third or fourth time I've done that. I did it a couple of times coming off snowboarding, having not hit a golf ball and won a golf tournament. So I'm pretty excited about the prospect, really. You know, the one thing that I've said before, like going into Callaway, is that my golf game might not be where you want it, and you might not know exactly what to expect, but I know my mind is going to be really fresh.

DAVID DUVAL: Well, I guess, obviously, some records have been falling. I guess as much as anything what I disagree with was the tone of how it was being -- yeah, and acting like it's just the scoring records, getting beat by eight or ten shots. It's kind of the same reaction that I had at Augusta when Tiger won. He just shattered the tournament record was the response, but, oh, you forgot he did it by a shot. It wasn't five shots or something. It's pretty clear that the depth of the fields is getting better and the scores have gone down. You know, you combine a lot of great players with good golf equipment and the hunger to win on perfectly prepared golf courses and, you know, you don't get any wind and you don't get any rain and you get 75-degree temperatures, some good things can happen.

DAVID DUVAL: I've thought about it. I actually thought I might just go back to the couch and eat Oreos and Doritos, Nutter Butters -- double-stuffed. See, you peel them off, the one cookie layer, and make them quadruple-stuffed.

DAVID DUVAL: It's extremely exciting. I think that -- you know, I wasn't there, so I don't know how much he was at the golf course. I would imagine he was there kind of like I was -- kind of from sunup to sundown every day. I think that that is probably helpful, actually, and helped him playing well. If you can just spend two or three days at the site, inside the ropes around all of the players, a little of that all might get knocked off before you tee off on Thursday. That's certainly how I approached it when I played at Medinah. What was I? 18, I guess. You know, you get rid of what that natural tendency of wanting to watch the other guys, your heroes. That way, you can go out and play yourself. I think it's just amazing how he played.

DAVID DUVAL: To set the record straight, I've seen just crazy reports that it is like the fifth or seventh set. It's the second, number 2. It's the second set that I have tried, I've used. It's not the fifth set or sixth set; it's the second.

DAVID DUVAL: Extremely laughable.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't think so. I don't. I doubt the other players do, too.

No, I guess I don't think so. I thought it was pretty laughable that Tiger was in a slump.

DAVID DUVAL: Yeah, I think this is the hardest golf tournament to win.

DAVID DUVAL: Because everybody is here.

DAVID DUVAL: My initial reaction would be that I would not favor the move. It seems to me that around that time of year, this is just -- what I'm going to say I have no basis for because I don't know the agronomy of how it will all work. Fred Klauk would know, but it seems to me as I recall that that time of year around here, it can get warm, and there's a lot of transition going on with the grasses. And I would think that -- I don't know if they are going to then try to maintain the ryegrass and overseeded bent greens or if they are going to try to make it back into a bermudagrass golf course for the tournament. I don't know how that would work and I would imagine that would be a difficult proposition. I would also think that you might have to -- you know, the field might have to get smaller, too, because at that time of the year we start to encounter typical afternoon storms and such. So, just changes the complexion of it. For better or worse, I don't know.

DAVID DUVAL: In Florida? I haven't played a lot of courses in Florida. So I don't know if it is or not. I don't really have a favorite golf course anywhere.

DAVID DUVAL: I like that I've won on it. (Smiles).