Duval rises to top again, wins by 9

KA LUA, Hawaii - With a five-stroke lead and the Mercedes Championships in the bag, David Duval stood on the 13th tee of the Kapalua Plantation course and gazed down at a dozen or so surfers riding the crest of a wave.

Duval can relate to that feeling.

He closed with a 5-under-par 68 today to shatter the tournament scoring record and win for the eighth time in 15 months, which left him sitting on top of the world.

"I hope I can do it another 10 or 15 years," Duval said. "To think of doing that at any point is unrealistic, but I've done that. So, I know I can."

Just two months after he ended a spectacular season on the PGA Tour by winning four times, earning a record $2.6 million and taking the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average, Duval wasted little time showing there is much more to accomplish.

On a Kapalua Plantation course that finally produced the vicious trade winds from the northeast, Duval finished at 26-under 266 to break the Mercedes scoring record set by Calvin Peete at La Costa Resort in 1986 when he had a 21-under 267.

The margin of victory was the widest on the PGA Tour since Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes, and it was the largest in the winners-only Mercedes since Gene Littler won by 13 strokes in 1955.

"It's just really neat to do that,'' Duval said. "And then to top it off, to do it in a tournament in which everybody in the event knows how to win, that's what makes it the most special.''

Mark O'Meara, who beat Duval for 1998 PGA Tour player of the year honours after winning The Masters and British Open, also shot a 68 and finished tied for second with Billy Mayfair (71) at 275. Vijay Singh was another stroke back, while Woods, Justin Leonard and Fred Funk were at 277.

"What you want to do out here is to prove you're better than any other player,'' Woods said. "David has been doing that.''

Duval is on the best roll the PGA Tour has seen since Nick Price won nine times in just under 15 months spread over the 1993 and '94 seasons. If you count the 1994 British Open, which was not considered an official PGA Tour event back then, Price actually won 10 times in that stretch with two of the victories being major championships (the 1994 PGA Championship was the other).

His victory probably isn't enough to jump Duval ahead of Woods and O'Meara in the Official World Rankings. But under the confounding formula for computing No. 1, a two-year rolling system that gives more weight to the current 52 weeks, that figures to change in the next few months.

The official word from the rest of the field spoke volumes.

"He's right up there with Tiger,'' said Tom Watson, pausing to consider all that Duval has accomplished in such a short time. "Right now, he has surpassed Tiger.''

Watson knows the feeling, having won eight times in 12 months that culminated when he repeated as the Byron Nelson Classic champion in 1980.

"The way it's going for him was the same with me,'' Watson said after a round of 76. "Winning begets winning. You feel you can win every time you play -- not that you're going to win, but that you can be around the lead or in the lead all the time.''

Against a backdrop of white caps dancing across the Pacific Ocean in winds that gusted to 30 mph, the final round started out as a survival course and turned into a coronation.

"He's a great player,'' O'Meara said. "I've played with him when he's played at his best, and he's just coming into his own.''

Even when Duval missed three of the first four greens, even when Funk knocked trimmed two strokes off the five-shot lead through five holes, Duval never blinked. He ran a 20-foot birdie putt on No. 5 about five feet by the hole, then made it coming back for par to keep the lead from shrinking even more.

"That's when I finally settled down," Duval said. "The closer and closer I go, I started to hit it better."

He fired an approach into 6 feet on the sixth hole for birdie, played an 80-foot chip with 30 feet of break to within 3 feet to save par on No. 8 and birdied the ninth to restore order at Kapalua.

"I just felt calm all week," said Duval, who birdied the last three holes and four of the last five.

The victory was his eighth in his last 27 PGA Tour starts, dating to his first career win in the Michelob Championship in October 1997.

Duval earned $468,000, along with a Mercedes-Benz SL 500. He now has won $4,328,031 in his last 27 tournaments, and average of $160,020 every time he tees it up.

"It's been phenomenal, no question about it,'' O'Meara said. "It wouldn't faze me at all if he went on to win five or six tournaments this year. He's got the ability to do it.''