THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY MERCEDES-BENZ AND MICHELOB

October 30, 1997

David Duval

DAVID DUVAL: Nothing special. I played real well. Certainly made my share of putts. Shot 5-under par. Made a couple mistakes. I seemed to recover fairly well. That's what you need to do to keep the round going.

DAVID DUVAL: No.

DAVID DUVAL: Well, I was playing for birdies, though, most of them. It's not like I was having to chip up. You know, I was being aggressive, I guess, a little more than I should have, and I just ran a few by. With the rain, it gets turned away from the hole, the ball doesn't want to stop.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't think you ever know. You know -- or I know that I'm playing well. Certainly taking that week off could have possibly hurt me. But at the same time, had I played -- I think taking a week off, I gave myself a better opportunity to play well because that would have made this my seventh tournament in a row, and that's an awful lot. It was something I had to do, just come out here and go with what I had. I might not have been playing as well. Early on in the week here when I got here, I certainly wasn't hitting it quite as well as I had the previous three weeks. Seems to have gotten a little better every day. I actually feel like I'm -- certainly feel like I'm striking the ball a little bit better than I did at Disney, but not quite as well as at Kingsmill.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't know. I think it's a hard golf course. That's a difficult question to answer. I feel with the people you have here playing, these players, these 30 guys played better than everybody else this year. It doesn't matter where you put them; if they're playing well and making putts, every golf course is going to play easy to them. I think it's hard to compare day-to-day like that. It seemed maybe to play a little shorter. Now that we got a little more rain, it will probably lengthen back up to what it was on Monday and Tuesday.

DAVID DUVAL: No, I haven't really noticed. I still do my thing and try to get prepared to play. I haven't really noticed.

DAVID DUVAL: No. I've been asked that a lot. I wish -- I do wish -- I wish I knew there was a secret formula, secret answer. Certainly if there was and I knew it, I wouldn't tell (laughter). But there's not. It boils down to hard work, preparation, making a few putts when you need to, getting a few bounces when you need to, all of a sudden you're on top. There's not a big difference from first to second. The best I can relate it is, you know, I got one heck of a break at Disney on 17. I didn't even realize I hit my tee shot into a tree, but I saw on the replay it was. Instead of kicking into the rough or into the water, it kicked into the fairway, I made a birdie. That's the difference, you know.

DAVID DUVAL: Exactly, or it would have dropped straight down and I would have had a difficult shot just to get it onto the green.

DAVID DUVAL: Exactly. I got a heck of a break on 1. Certainly everybody gets them. Horrible shot really. Somehow it kicked into the fairway, I made par. You know, I don't even know what's over there. I'm looking at making five or six probably if it goes straight through. Those are the things you need.

DAVID DUVAL: I think, yes, I'm doing that well, but I think that's because maybe a little confidence. I don't know. It doesn't faze you, you know. I've been better at accepting my poor shots or putts. I just hit a horrible putt on 17, that second putt. As soon as I hit it, I knew it wasn't going in. The thing that really helps is just what you said, I birdied the very next hole, so I'm back where I was. I've lost a hole, but I haven't lost any ground, I made it right back up. That as much as anything keeps rounds going and gives you the confidence to maybe even go a little more.

DAVID DUVAL: Why what?

DAVID DUVAL: I don't know what everybody else hit, I hit a driver and 4-iron on the green. You expect to make a birdie on a par 5 when you're hitting a 4-iron up.

DAVID DUVAL: I was about, I don't know, 20 feet, 22 feet.

DAVID DUVAL: Yes.

DAVID DUVAL: Was downwind, across. You hit it out left, the wind is going to blow it right back in the fairway.

DAVID DUVAL: You can run it up if you have a longer club, stop it if you have a middle iron.

DAVID DUVAL: 214 yards.

DAVID DUVAL: Yeah. I don't know. I think the best way is just go play. You know if you're playing well, you're going to make some birdies, more than likely you're going to make some bogeys, especially playing Bermuda rough like they have here. You just try to limit your mistakes. When you have a club in your hand you feel good with, feel you can get aggressive, you do. When you feel a little shaky, you back off, give yourself a 30-, 40-footer, get down the tube from there. I think it boils down to kind of just taking the good with the bad; what goes your way, what doesn't. You know as a player that everything is not going to go your way. You just try to make the best of each situation.

DAVID DUVAL: I feel they are certainly going my way better than they have for most of the year. I don't feel as if I had played particularly well up really through the PGA. I think at the same time when you're not playing well, you don't see the good things that are happening, you only see the bad things. As you start to play better, you see the good breaks you get and you realize you got it and you try to capitalize on it. You just go with it. I don't know. It's a silly game. A lot of weird things happen. A lot of crazy things happen. A lot of great things happen as well. You know, the thing I've always thought about, you never know when you're going to make a 50- or 60-foot putt. Like I did at Disney, you might just hit a pretty poor iron shot and have a putt that you're facing that you got basically no chance of even getting down, and all of a sudden might just go in. I think you just got to kind of keep that in the forefront and realize that something crazy could happen at any time, and all of a sudden things could change.

DAVID DUVAL: No. It means the same. I think you always have to be confident and feel good about what you're doing, really kind of believe in yourself. Even when you make bad decisions, believe that that is what you had to do, made the best choice, and it was wrong. Especially I think with the players out here, they're unbelievably talented. I think it would be silly to question yourself. Everybody is going to make bad choices. There's no reason to start questioning yourself because that might feed back into everything else and really wreck the game.

DAVID DUVAL: Well, I do feel better about it all. I'm certainly playing better than I have all year. I think it's just the nature of game; it feeds on itself. You just try to ride it out as best you can.

DAVID DUVAL: I haven't thought about it a whole lot, to be honest with you. I think it's something that the players wanted, the fans wanted to see, the game needed. You know, that's a little ways down the road. You deal with it, participate if your eligible when the time comes.

DAVID DUVAL: I'm sorry?

DAVID DUVAL: Probably (laughter). I think it happens more so on this type of golf course. What I mean by that, with the grass out here, the Bermuda, crazy things happen, you know. You might hit a 9-iron 120 yards out, next time you might hit it 180 yards. I don't know. I would expect to see a lot of good scores, you know. That might not mean more 66's. It might mean more 70's. I don't know.

DAVID DUVAL: Thank you.