Duval still trying to lose his 'choker' tag

When you have won 11 titles in 34 events, including one with a final round of 59, the description "choker" hardly seems to fit.

Yet it is a label David Duval still has to contend with from time to time.

The 27-year-old Floridian has just been knocked off the top of the world rankings, his 14-week reign ended by Tiger Woods.

Duval earned his "choker" reputation during the 1996 and 1997 seasons when he had a succession of second-place finishes after disappointing final rounds. His scoring average disclosed that he had played on Sundays nearly three strokes worse than on Saturdays.

Even though he broke into the winner's circle in spectacular fashion by claiming the last three tournaments of 1997, then won four more last year and four in the first three months of this year, the tag never really went away.

It resurfaced when he finished tied second at last year's U.S. Masters after leading by three strokes with three holes to play.

There have been instances this year when, despite his early dominance on the U.S. Tour including that 59 to win the Bob Hope Classic, the slings and arrows were aimed his way again.

Last month's U.S. Open was a case in point. He was up with the leaders for two rounds and despite a third round of 75 was still in the hunt. But another 75 on the last day dropped him back to joint seventh place.

"There have been a lot of Sundays when I haven't played as well as I can," Duval conceded on Wednesday after his final practice run for the Open starting on today.

"It might be disappointing a little bit. I certainly would like to have played better. But sometimes those rounds I had on the weekend weren't necessarily because of poor play. It was because I didn't play as well as I needed to to win."

Duval is not alone in expecting four days of hard work playing Carnoustie this week.

"I'm trying not to expend much energy thinking what it is going to be like. We all know. It is going to be hard.

"I have never played a course with the combination of rough as high and fairways as tight as they are here," he said.

He said the setup of the course had made it "target golf on a links layout."

"In the States, target golf is based on playing everything in the air to get to a certain point. Here it is like that except that often you can't hit it up in the air."

He felt a lot of what is meant by links golf has been taken out of the 7,361-yard course, in that you cannot play the bump and run shots that are a feature of most Open courses.

"It seems to me a lot of links golf is played on the ground and you can't play this course on the ground," he said.

"I still like this golf course. But you are going to have a lot of people shaking their hads out there and I may very well be one of them."

Reuters