They are among the best
players in the world, considered the chief challengers to Tiger Woods. They already
have earned more than $1 million this year, and the season is not even four months
old.
Lately, however, David
Duval, Davis Love III, and Ernie Els share one other distinction that has become
a troubling trend.
They can't seem to win.
All of them have been there
on the back nine Sunday, either in the lead or close enough that it seems like
only a matter of time before they're holding an oversized check and hoisting
a trophy for the cameras.
The latest opportunity
belonged to Els, a two-time U.S. Open champion whose credentials carried him
only so far in the MCI Classic.
With a birdie sandwiched
between two great bunker saves, he was at 14-under and three strokes clear, cruising
toward what looked like a sure victory. Suddenly, shockingly, the Big Easy became
the Big Pushover.
"I don't know what happened,"
Els said after playing the final 11 holes in 5-over to finish five strokes behind
Stewart Cink. "I just lost it. What can you do?"
That's a consolation speech
Love should know by heart. Love was only three strokes behind Els to start the
final round and quickly bowed out, just as he did in The
Masters a week early, just as he did in the Bay
Hill Invitational a month ago.
Duval wasn't at Harbour
Town. He folded his tent a week earlier at Augusta National, one stroke out of
the lead with seven holes to play when he hit a bad shot at a bad time. He wound
up with a bogey on the par-5 13th and finished four strokes behind Vijay Singh.
Just more than a year ago,
Duval was No. 1 in the world, a winner in 11 of his last 34 tournaments. He is
0-for-23 since, dating to his victory in Atlanta the week before last year's
Masters.
Els is 0-for-26 going back
to his victory a year ago in Los Angeles, where he held off Woods, Duval, and
Love down the stretch at Riviera.
"When you haven't won like
me, for almost a year now on this tour, it feels like you've got to work a little
harder to get back there," Els said. "I've felt like that for quite some time."
It must feel even longer
for Love.
He followed his first major,
the PGA Championship at Winged Foot in 1997, with a victory two months later
at the Buick Challenge and then another victory the following spring in the 1998
MCI Classic. Since then, he has had six runner-up finishes, eight chances on
Sunday afternoons, a lot of money, and no hardware.
He is 0-for-52 since his
last victory.
"Time flies out here,"
Love said. "I think it would seem like a long time if I hadn't played well at
all in between, but I've been close and had a lot of exciting things happen in
between. So it hasn't been grinding on me or anything."
Duval is the most puzzling
of the three. He remains the only player to hold the No. 1 ranking without ever
having won a major. Clearly, he has enough talent to win with less than his best.
Only now, he can't seem to win under any circumstances.
The same player who won
four times before the '99 Masters let three chances get away on the West Coast
this year. Putting cost him in Hawaii at the Mercedes Championships and in the
Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, and his 5-iron into Rae's Creek cost him a chance
to wear a green jacket.
His focus on The Masters
came at the expense of other victories.
"I probably wasn't as focused
on those as much as I should have been," Duval said during The Masters. "Not
to say I've neglected other events, but I've had an eye to the future. That's
a balance I'll have to work on."
Duval, Love, and Els are
not the only ones in a drought.
Justin Leonard has two
big wins on his resume, the 1997 British Open and The Players Championship a
year later. The latter was his last victory, a dubious winless streak at 55 and
counting.
Nick Price and Lee Janzen,
with five majors between him, also have to look back to 1998 to find their last
first-place check.
No one said winning was
easy, especially on the PGA Tour. In no other sport is a 25 percent success rate
considered a banner year.
Maybe that's the problem.
Perhaps Woods has made
winning look so routine -- 10 of his last 18 tour events -- that expectation
levels are rising around him.
"It just seems like when
he plays, he wins," Els said. "It kind of makes people think it's easy to win
out here on tour. I guess when you're on such a high, with so much talent like
Tiger has, that winning becomes a habit."
Not winning has become
a habit that Duval, Els, and Love need to break.
