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ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANSApril 24, 2014David DuvalAVONDALE, LOUISIANA THE MODERATOR: Welcome David Duval to the media center. David, obviously, a nice way to start, bogey‑free through the first round. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about what went well for you out there, and we'll open it up for a handful of questions. DAVID DUVAL: Well, everything did. It's simple formula most weeks and it's a very simple formula here. This golf course demands good hitting. You have to drive it well, you have to hit the long to mid‑irons well the par 3s are a challenge, several tee shots that are tough. But good hitting begets good play around this golf course, and that's what I did. That's why I was really, really hoping that I could get an opportunity to come here because I feel like I've been hitting the golf ball well, and in a place like this, it could really show. Q. You always seem to feel pretty comfortable here. Do you like the surroundings? DAVID DUVAL: I love it here. Yeah, I don't have a hometown tournament any longer. I live in Denver now, and International's gone, so obviously the BMW is coming back this year to Cherry Hills, my home course. But, I've been very lucky to meet a lot of great folks around here. You know, I could probably list off 20 people that I keep in touch with, from people who have worked inside in the dining room to bull rider friends of mine, to just people we've befriended that are fans of mine and we've gotten to know. We love the dining. We love partaking in all the fancy restaurants and all the great places we go. My wife got in yesterday because this is one she doesn't miss, and we went straight to Drago's as soon as she got here. I was going to stop at Mother's a little while later, but it was a little bit of a line. I just love being here. I've been coming here a long time. I've played a lot of golf tournaments here. I don't know the number. I'd probably say I've played 12, 15 times here in 20 years, something like that. I'm not sure. They could probably tell you‑‑ back to the English Turn days, so we just love it here. Q. When you don't have a set schedule, what is your preparation like at home? How do you stay fresh when you don't really know when your next start is? DAVID DUVAL: Yeah, I just got asked that outside. It's very difficult. I haven't played a golf tournament in a month. Before that I had another month or five, six weeks off. It's a great challenge. I was hoping to put together 15 to 18 event schedule, it just has not panned out that way. The spots have been very tough to get. So what I've done, like when I got done playing at Bay Hill, I went over to try to qualify for San Antonio and missed it. I think had four spots. I tied for fifth. But went home and kind of thought about what I could do. Hoping I'm playing New Orleans four weeks later, what is the best thing I can do to be ready? So what I've started to do at home is I had a special set of golf clubs made, starting at 56°, backing out 7°. So I carry 56, a 49, a 42, a 35.5, a 28.5, and like a 21.5. I carry a driver and putter and a 4‑wood which I don't even play a 4‑wood, so I'm carrying a limited set of clubs. So I have the challenge of having to hit golf shots. I've been working on my golf swing for a long time, for over a year now, and I feel like I've got it fixed. But so it's like how do I stay sharp? The other thing is I carry those clubs. I walk and I carry them. Because you don't have to be the greatest athlete in the world to play golf, but I challenge people who don't do it to come out and be on your feet for eight, nine hours, six straight days, walk a golf course for six straight days. I felt like as well as I might play, come Saturday or Sunday I'm probably going to be tired if I'm not doing anything. So those are the things that I figured out I could do to be as sharp as possible when I do get to play. Q. What was the best part of your game today? Did one shot or one hole really get you started really good? DAVID DUVAL: No, honestly, I feel like I hit the golf ball where I was aiming it all day, controlled the shots. The couple challenging shots for me like the third hole, especially because I was kind of in between clubs, I hit a nice big kind of cut 2‑iron over on the left side of the green. The next hole, the way I cut the ball with the left to right wind was a bit of a challenge. That is one of the best drives I hit all day. I was very proud of those golf shots. More proud of getting through a round of golf as stress‑free as I've had in a long, long time. I had to make about a five, maybe a six‑foot putt on 17 for par, but other than that I couldn't have come close to making a bogey. I feel very good about that. I feel like I could have easily shot a few shots better, a few lip outs and things like that, but we always say that. I hit it good enough to do that. I'm very proud to get through a round of golf like that with just walking down the fairway and no stress, you know. Q. Does winning still remain a top priority for you when you enter tournaments? DAVID DUVAL: It does. I feel like I'm playing well enough to win golf tournaments. The challenge, again, is I've played very few tournaments. I feel confident in saying that I can hit a two‑, three‑, four‑week stretch where I know I'm playing next week and the week after I could settle myself down that much more. Teeing off here, having not played in a month and knowing that I'm not, as of right now, putting aside, I could change things by playing well to get into the top 10 or something like that I'm not in a golf tournament that I now of until Memphis. I have that much more when I tee off. And that's why I was asked outside about what does it do for me the next three days? Well, frankly, it doesn't do a whole lot, because my challenge is to not get ahead of myself, and we talk about that a lot. It's an extra burden on me right now because I know I'm playing good golf and the only thing I can do is try to hit the golf ball like I know I am hitting it and do that. Because the other things will take care of themselves, but, again, all I truly have is ‑‑ I don't have next week. I have tomorrow now and that's all I'll have. Q. (No microphone) has it been a dramatic change to scale that feeling down? DAVID DUVAL: As I sit here and looking back on it, two or three years ago I may have been thinking I can win that golf tournament. Things, looking back on it, I wasn't physically equipped. My game wasn't good enough. I was a little delusional about how I was playing, and that's where the work I've done over the last year with Chris and he's helped me restore my golf swing, now I'm not delusional about it. I know how I'm hitting the golf ball and how I'm swinging the golf club. Is it fair to fully expect to come out here and win this golf tournament after a month off and five weeks off? Maybe not. But I'm here to tell you stranger things have happened. I'm hitting the golf ball well enough to do it. But, again, like I say, that is my challenge. All I have is tomorrow now for me right now, because I don't have next week. So it's tomorrow, and that's what I'm going to pay attention to. Q. Can you expand a little bit on the work that you've done with Chris? You say that you got your swing fixed, what exactly does that entail? DAVID DUVAL: Well, I got to basically swinging the golf club in an in‑to‑out motion, and I've always swung it in‑to‑in, and that's, you know, you can talk to a lot of different people about how they do their best method of hitting. I'm a firm believer that the great hitters of the golf ball through the history of the game have always swung it in‑to‑in and kind of to the left through the golf ball. That is how you reduce club face rotation by doing that, you reduce timing, so that's what I've been trying to do and that's what I'm doing. And in that process, you start eliminating the left side of the golf course again, like I always did. So that's kind of what I'm paying attention to. That's what I'm trying to do. Right now, if I don't make a good golf swing, I actually miss it right trying to swing it left. I just don't swing it hard enough left. Golf is a crazy game. It's a complete game of opposites. You think you know if you've hit a left shot, you need to swing it out right. No, it's going to go further left if you swing it that way. If you don't want to hit it left, you better swing it left, things like that. So that's what we've done. I feel very comfortable. I feel natural again. I feel like the timing is right. Q. You're a veteran of this golf course and you've played here a lot. They've changed the No. 2 green and made it a little bit longer, I think. Like it, don't like it? How different does it play this year? DAVID DUVAL: I think it plays a little different because it doesn't roll quite as perfectly as the others. The other 17 greens are as good as I've seen in a long time. Also, frankly, in my opinion, it's a little slower because it's new. Overall, looking at it, I much prefer that to what it was. I thought that was kind of a bad green complex in the past. Hated all that big pile of grass to the right that they had. I thought that was silly, but over there, they're sporadic though, and I think it's a great fix. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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