David Duval collects
the 1999 Players trophy. Allsport.
Colin Montgomerie believes
the only competition at The
Players Championship will be for second place -- if Tiger Woods has a great
first round.
David Duval sees a different
scenario.
"To win this week, I'm
going to have to play very, very well. And it's very conceivable the player I
might have to beat is Tiger Woods," Duval said today.
"But I can promise you
one thing," he said. "Tiger Woods knows he's going to have to play very well
to beat me."
The wraparound shades have
not dimmed Duval's perspective.
He knows that Woods has
won 10 of his last 16 events on the PGA Tour, including last week at the Bay
Hill Invitational, when he never trailed over the final 36 holes. He also knows
Woods has a death grip on the world's No. 1 ranking.
But that's all Duval is
willing to concede. His message on the eve of the tournament with the richest
purse in golf should be taken to heart by the rest of the field:
Give Woods his due. Just
don't give him the tournament.
"You can convince yourself
conceivably that he's playing better than you are, and that doesn't do you any
good," Duval said. "I certainly acknowledge that he's playing great golf. But
I don't see how that should transpire into people thinking they can't win golf
tournaments.
"If that's the case, they
shouldn't be playing."
Perhaps Montgomerie should
keep the engine running on his courtesy car.
The Scot, coming off a
record seventh straight European Tour money title, said he sensed a pall in the
Bay Hill locker room last week after Woods opened with a 69, just one off the
lead.
"I think the view in the
locker room, without saying it out loud, was the tournament was finished," Montgomerie
said. "And it was who is going to finish second?"
This caught Hal Sutton,
among others, by surprise.
"He wasn't going in the
locker room that I was in," Sutton said. "I've only played with Tiger once this
year. I felt it was important that I send a message to me and to him -- that
I could beat him, and that he knew I could beat him.''
That was the first two
rounds in the Nissan Open. Sutton opened with rounds of 69-67, better than Woods
both days. Neither won.
Sutton said he once asked
Jack Nicklaus if he could be as dominant now as he was in the 1960s and '70s.
The answer was no, because Nicklaus said most players back then didn't think
they could beat him.
Sutton doesn't want to
fall into that category. Neither does Davis Love III, who has finished second
to Woods four times, including last week at Bay Hill.
"I've finished second to
a lot of guys," Love said.
Woods will be the favorite
this week because he always is. He has 18 PGA Tour victories in 3 1/2 years --
as many as Greg Norman in 15 full seasons -- and has not finished lower than
18th in a stroke-play tournament the past year.
The TPC at Sawgrass could
present the stiffest test.
Woods won the first of
his three straight U.S. Amateurs at Sawgrass in 1994, but has never shot in the
60s in 12 rounds at The Players Championship, when the rough is shaggy and the
greens like concrete.
"Sometimes this golf course
plays very difficult," Woods said. "Other times, I haven't played well. It's
one of those things I haven't put together yet. Hopefully, this year will be
different."
One thing never changes.
The Players Championship,
despite its $6 million purse and the strongest, deepest field of the year, is
still something of a tune-up for Woods.
"It's my last tournament
before The Masters," he said. "More importantly, this is the best field on a
very tough golf course. That's very similar to what we're going to face two weeks
from now. If they wanted to have a fifth major, this would be it."
The course was so difficult
last year that Duval won with a 73-74 on the weekend. It was his biggest victory
ever and enabled him to supplant Woods as No. 1 in the world for the next three
months.
Duval can't catch him in
the Official World Golf Ranking for another year at least. But he wouldn't mind
a crack at him this week.
