“The field is extremely strong,” said new executive director Sandy Diamond.
A 58 and a 59 will make their PGA Tour Champions debut in Naples this year.
No those aren’t the ages for David Duval and Jim Furyk.
They’ve each shot that score on the PGA Tour.
Duval plans to make his transition from TV fully on the PGA Tour Champions this year.
So that will include the 35th annual Chubb Classic presented by SERVPRO coming up Feb. 14-20 at Tiburón Golf Club at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort, the tournament announced Monday.
Duval, a former world No. 1, made his Champions debut in the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai in Hawaii last month, and tied for 34th. He turned 50 on Nov. 9.
Duval won 13 PGA Tour events, all from 1997 to 2001, including the 1999 Players, the 1997 Tour Championship, and the 2001 British Open. He became the first player to shoot 59 in the final round of a tournament to win in 1999 at the now-American Express.
Furyk, a 17-time PGA Tour winner, including the 2003 U.S. Open and three-time PGA Tour Champions winner, will make his debut at the Chubb Classic. Furyk shot a 59 at the BMW Championship in 2013, and then three years later, became the first ever to shoot a 58, doing so at the Travelers Championship.
‘The field is extremely strong’
Three-time champion Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomerie, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen were among the commitments announced Monday.
“The field is extremely strong,” new executive director Sandy Diamond said.
But the field will not include its defending champion, Diamond all but confirmed.
Steve Stricker, who won last April in the first playing of the tournament at Tiburón Golf Club’s Black Course, had a long hospital stay toward the end of 2021 due to inflammation around his heart.
“I don’t think he’s going to be here,” Diamond said. “I think it’ll take a minor miracle.
“I spoke to his agent and he is doing much better, so that’s good.”
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What to know for Chubb Classic 2022
There will be a 78-player field competing in the 54-hole championship Friday through Sunday, for a share of the $1.6 million purse. Players have until 5 p.m. ET on Friday, Feb. 11 to commit to the Chubb Classic. Golf Channel will televise live all three rounds of play.
Els, a World Golf Hall-of-Fame member who has recorded more than 70 professional victories worldwide including four major championships, will be making his second consecutive appearance.
The Chubb Classic is the longest-standing PGA Tour Champions event to be contested in the same metropolitan area. And Tiburón has become the only facility to host a PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, and PGA Tour Champions event in the same calendar year.
Diamond said that something that’s also been good has been the sales component. The 56 groups for the two-day pro-am are completely sold out.
“My background is more on the business development side, the sponsorships and marketing,” Diamond said.
While Stricker isn’t likely to return, something just as important will — fans. After not allowing the general public to attend last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, full attendance will be allowed this year.
“That’s probably the biggest thing,” Diamond said.
David Duval has never minced words, and on the eve of starting a new chapter in his professional life, he’s not about to change.
“I expect to succeed,” he said of his first foray into the PGA Tour Champions at this week’s Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai Golf Club in Ka’upulehu-Kona, Hawaii.
The Jacksonville native and Episcopal graduate, who won 13 times on the PGA Tour and for most of the 1999 season supplanted Tiger Woods at No. 1 in the world, turned 50 years old Nov. 9.
While he hasn’t made a cut on the PGA Tour since the 2015 British Open at St. Andrews, Duval pointed out that he certainly has enough tread left on the tires.
“I haven’t played 50 golf tournaments in the last decade and so I’m patient and giving myself time to get my feet under myself again,” he said in a video posted on the PGA Tour Champions Twitter site. “My wife Susie and I are so excited about the opportunity and so looking forward to it.”
David Duval with the claret jug after victory in the 2001 British Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club in England. (Stephen Munday/ALLSPORT)
Duval won all of his Tour events between 1997 and 2001, including the 1999 Players, the 1997 Tour Championship and the 2001 British Open. He won four times in 1998 and captured the Tour’s scoring and money titles.
He became the first player to shoot 59 in the final round of a tournament to win, at the 1999 American Express.
Duval was the runner-up in the Masters twice and had 11 top-10s in majors. But he went into a prolonged slump beginning in 2002, brought on by a series of injuries from neck to knee.
Duval’s main problem used to be his strength: the best combination of long and accurate off the tee. There were a few times when it appeared he might have regained his old touch, such as a tie for second in the 2009 U.S. Open and a tie for second at Pebble Beach in 2010.
But since his last made cut, Duval hasn’t played on the weekend in 22 starts in six years, counting two appearances in a Korn Ferry Tour event near his Denver home.
Duval has always seemed at peace. He took on three stepchildren when he married his wife, and they had two more children. He also combined family with his last big moment on the golf course, winning the 2016 PNC Father-Son with stepson Nick Karavites.
David Duval has spent much of the past decade as an analyst for NBC and Golf Channel. (Cy Cyr/PGA Tour)
Duval has been an analyst for Golf Channel, drawing good reviews for his insight and preparedness.
He’s also been working on his game, but not putting any pressure on himself.
“I’ve been practicing and playing and working at it,” he said in the PGA Tour Champions interview. “Getting over some little injury problems I’ve had over the past couple of years. That’s all behind me now. But I’m sure there were will be some nerves and anxiety and rust.”
Also in the field this week is Jim Furyk—who shot a 62 in the opening round of the Sony Open in Hawaii on the PGA Tour last week while playing on a sponsor exemption— as well as last season’s Charles Schwab Cup winner Bernhard Langer, Tom Watson, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Mark O’Meara, Vijay Singh and defending champion Darren Clarke.
The Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai is a 54-hole event. It’s the first of 28 events on the PGA Tour Champions schedule in 2022 that will span 20 states and three countries. A record $62 million in prize money will be up for grabs. Each event will be televised on Golf Channel, with three scheduled for weekend coverage on NBC: the Senior PGA Championship, the Senior Open Championship and the U.S. Senior Open.
The last time we saw Woods play golf on television was at this event back in 2020. Time really is a flat circle.
However, the Woods-duo isn’t the only big-name partnership headed to Florida. Defending champions Justin and his father Mike Thomas will look to triumph again. Bubba Watson will be playing with his father-in-law, while Nelly Korda will be playing with her dad, Petr.
Here’s a look at the 20 partnerships at this year’s PNC Championship, which requires that each team have a major champion. The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, Orlando, Grande Lakes is the host venue.
No cliché is more kindly yet bromidic than the assertion that a slumping star will win again simply because he or she is too good not to.
Among the plentiful clichés permeating golf commentary, there is none more kindly yet bromidic than the assertion that a slumping star will win again simply because he or she is too good not to. It’s a polite fiction, peddled about almost every prominent professional who achieved early success only to plunge into, if not obscurity, then at least irrelevance. As analysis, it lies somewhere between sentimentality and sycophancy, but nowhere close to sound.
Golf’s recent run of resurrections began—appropriately enough, for those particular to the low-hanging fruit such narratives represent—on Easter Sunday, when Jordan Spieth won the Valero Texas Open for his first victory in almost four years. A week later, Hideki Matsuyama’s Masters triumph ended a drought of similar duration. And on Saturday, Lydia Ko completed the trifecta (or trinity) with a seven-stroke romp at the LPGA’s Lotte Championship after three years wandering the desert in search of a title.
These comebacks—particularly those of Spieth and Ko—are welcome positives for their respective Tours. Both are likable and engaging personalities whose lack of form never once manifested itself in a lack of class or professionalism. All slumps are relative, of course. The results posted by Spieth and Ko suggest they were more searching than wholly lost, with the odd encouraging hint of familiar brilliance amid too much mediocrity.
Jordan Spieth walks off the first tee box during the third round of the 2021 Valero Texas Open. (Photo: Daniel Dunn-USA TODAY Sports)
But whatever led them back to the winner’s circle—determination, talent, hard work, perseverance—it was assuredly not the mawkish twaddle that they were just too good not to be there again.
Just as cemeteries are full of indispensable people, lesser Tours and broadcasting booths are peopled with those thought too good not to win again. Some of the falls from grace were so precipitous as to become shorthand reference points even for casual fans.
The obvious one is David Duval. He won 13 PGA Tour titles in under four years, culminating in his Open Championship victory at Royal Lytham 20 years ago. A few months later in Japan, two days after his 30th birthday, he cashed his last winner’s check.
The Claret Jug can seem a poisoned chalice for some of its recipients. Ian Baker-Finch won it a decade before Duval, but six years later he wept in the locker room at Royal Troon when he couldn’t break 90 in the opening round. That afternoon he withdrew from the Open and quit tournament golf.
Seve Ballesteros won three Opens but was only 38 years old when the victories dried up, his swing and body decayed beyond repair. A friend of mine once asked Seve—a man not given to modesty—who would win if Europe’s ‘Big Five’ of the ‘80s faced off at their best. “Sandy would win,” Seve replied firmly. “But I would be second.” Yet Sandy—as in Lyle, Open and Masters champion—was finished even earlier than Seve, at age 34, not counting a European Seniors win and a couple of hickory events in his native Scotland.
Lyle’s Open came at Royal St. George’s, where the championship makes its overdue return (pandemic permitting) in July. Four years earlier at RSG’s, Bill Rogers won the Jug, one of seven worldwide titles the 30-year-old Texan claimed in ’81. By ’88, Rogers was working in a San Antonio pro shop, burned out and far removed from his last win. Yani Tseng won two Women’s British Opens among her five majors and 15 LPGA titles, all in a four-year span. She was 23 when the slump started. She’s now 32 with a world ranking of 1,025th. We can reach back further. Ralph Guldahl: 16 wins, three majors, done at 29.
Every one of those stars met the treacly threshold of being too good not to win again,
Ko’s win proved that fine players can rediscover the magic, but if you knew where to look the same week bore reminders that that many simply can’t, no matter how hard they try. Martin Kaymer was third in the European Tour’s Austrian Open on Sunday. The German hasn’t won since the very day he was proclaimed golf’s dominant force—June 15, 2014, the day he won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 by eight shots, a month after having won the Players Championship. He was 29 years old with two majors on a 23-win résumé. He’s now 36 but the résumé requires no updating.
Men with lesser records sail on, their careers glorious wrecks of what was once promised. Luke Donald was runner-up in the RBC Heritage five times, but this week he missed the cut for the 15th time in his last 17 starts. The former world No. 1 is almost a decade distant from his last W, and ranked 584th. Matteo Manassero won the British Amateur and made a Masters cut at age 16, and had four European Tour wins at 20. He’s now playing now on the Alps Tour, not a circuit anyone wants to play his way back to.
None of the aforementioned are working less assiduously than did Spieth and Ko, and stand as testament that talent and determination is not always sufficient for reward at the highest level. This is a capricious sport, and the road back to relevance will prove impassable for most. After her victory, Ko credited Spieth with inspiring her. She knew he had been tilling fields that had lain fallow for several seasons before his win in Texas. Perhaps hers will in turn spark someone else who knows they are good enough to win again, and who understands that none are too good not to.
Sometimes, even the greatest golfers can have a bad hole. See who has had the worst.
You think that snowman that just went on your scorecard looks bad?
There have been far worse scores posted – even from the professionals on the PGA Tour.
This list takes a closer look at the highest numbers ever posted in official events. Some of the names may surprise you, some may be golfers you’ve never heard of and some of these are likely to make you say ‘Oh, yea. I remember that.’
This list is based on data from the PGA Tour. Without further adieu, these are the 20 highest single-hole scores in history and names of the pros who own them.
Shari Duval, who built the Ponte Vedra-based K9s for Warriors veterans nonprofit into a national presence, has died after a cancer battle.
Shari Duval, who founded and built the Ponte Vedra-based K9s for Warriors veterans nonprofit into a national presence, has died after a battle with cancer.
She was 75.
“I’m heartbroken,” CEO Rory Diamond wrote on Twitter. “She had been valiantly fighting cancer over and over and winning and this last bout was just too much.”
Duval founded K9s For Warriors in 2011 to train shelter dogs as service dogs and pair them with veterans suffering service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and military sexual trauma. As of January the nonprofit has “rescued” 1,268 dogs and 650 veterans, according to the website, at no charge to the veterans.
“Shari created K9’s for Warriors through sheer grit, love and a tenacity that I’ve never knew existed,” wrote Diamond, who is also a Jacksonville City Council member. “She pioneered how to love on our warriors and stop veteran suicide. Like so many others, she changed my life forever. … As one of our warriors just said, ‘St. Peter is standing at the Pearly Gates and when he sees Shari he will surely open wide the gates of heaven and say ‘no introduction is needed to a saint such as yourself.'”
Hayden Reed, manager of canine support operations at K9s for Warriors, introduces support dog Sully to then-second lady Karen Pence as she toured the facility with the nonprofit’s founder, Shari Duval, in 2020. (Bob Self/Florida Time Union)
Staff and warriors alike called her Mom. In December the K9s for Warriors main campus was renamed “The Shari Duval K9s For Warriors National Headquarters.”
Diamond’s fellow council member, Brenda Priestly Jackson, wrote on Twitter that he and fellow K9s staff and supporters “will continue the act of creating together & continue her legacy of services for veterans.”
In 2017 Duval was named a Florida Times-Union EVE award winner for her work with veterans. She told the paper that she started K9s after her son Brett, a veteran K9 police officer, returned from two Army tours in Iraq a changed man, with severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.
“I would have lost him to suicide,” Duval told the paper. “His body came home, but he didn’t … My son was still in Iraq.”
Doctors couldn’t help, but she found research on post-traumatic stress disability that showed service dogs could. When Simon began working with a Belgian Malinois named Reagan, the “old Brett” emerged and K9s for Warriors was born.
In the beginning, she had no financial resources except her own, no facility and no dogs. But Duval grew the nonprofit into what she said was the largest, most successful service dog program in the United States for veterans with the Ponte Vedra Beach headquarters and other campuses in Alachua County and San Antonio.
“The best way we could help these deserving warriors was to … train and give service canines to assist our warriors’ efforts to return to civilian life with dignity and independence,” Duval said on the K9s website. “We have been honored to serve these brave men and women that have given this country so much.
“We are a small charity doing huge work and making a difference. Our men and women of our military fought for our tomorrows, so we fight for theirs,” she said. “Our program has been successful, with documented recovery from the debilitating horrors of war, but the need is critical and overwhelming.”
After K9s posted news of her death on Facebook, hundreds of people commented on the impact she made and the lives she saved. They said she was an angel on earth.
“My husband Daniel was K9s for Warriors’ first graduate. You helped him soooooooo much and paired him with Sarge the first graduate pup. Thank you for everything you did,” wrote Valeria Dorantes Harasim.
In this special Master’s edition of Golfweek Rewind, JuliaKate E. Culpepper recaps the 2020 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, where Dustin Johnson won his first green jacket.
In this special Master’s edition of Golfweek Rewind, JuliaKate E. Culpepper recaps the 2020 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, where Dustin Johnson won his first green jacket.
The former World No. 1 David Duval was on his way to Augusta National when he tested positive for COVID-19, was forced to return home.
David Duval, the former World No. 1 golfer and now a broadcaster with Golf Channel, will miss this week’s Masters after having tested positive for COVID-19.
After testing positive on his way to Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, the 49-year-old television analyst returned to his home in Denver.
“I’m so sad not being a part of the Masters coverage this week,” Duval said Tuesday night on Twitter. “I flew to Atlanta and drove to Augusta Sunday. I went straight to the testing site and got tested. Like so many other Americans I was apparently unknowingly exposed to COVID and tested positive. …
“As of now I have no symptoms. I drove home straight thru the night and am in quarantine in my basement.”
I’m so sad not being a part of the Masters coverage this week. I flew to Atlanta and drove to Augusta Sunday. I went straight to the testing site and got tested. Like so many other Americans I was apparently unknowingly exposed to COVID and tested positive.
Duval was scheduled to work this week for Golf Channel from Augusta National Golf Club. He also had taken a lead analyst role with ESPN at the PGA Championship in August.
Duval has a long history of near misses at Augusta National. At the peak of his game around the turn of the century – he won the 2001 British Open – Duval finished tied for second at Augusta in 1998, tied for sixth in 1999, tied for third in 2000 and second in 2001.
As of now I have no symptoms. I drove home straight thru the night and am in quarantine in my basement.
Cameo is a website and app that allows you to request personalized messages from all your favorite celebrities, including several PGA Tour and LPGA pros.
Launched in 2017, Cameo has increased in popularity over the years with more than 30,000 celebrities currently on the platform.
Fans can request a birthday wish, joke, advice and much more.
Among the golfers, prices can range from $750 for a message from John Daly to $110 for Golf Channel’s Blair O’Neal to $5 for trick-shot artist Mathias Schjoelberg.
Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia, David Duval and Graeme McDowell are among the roster of golfers you can choose from. McDowell is using Cameo for good: His page says all proceeds go to the G-Mac Foundation.
The platform has a new feature where you can direct message your favorite celebrity for a fee. Not every celebrity has to opt-in to this feature, but it is generally less expensive than the traditional video messages.
David Duval opens up on golf, life, and why he doesn’t like the dishes in the kitchen sink.
Golf Channel analyst David Duval flew home from the Players Championship on Friday, March 12 and has been sheltering in place with his family at their Denver home. The 2001 British Open champion has been keeping busy doing a lot of yard work, and even had to rent a chipper a couple of days ago.
“I’m just hoping we, as a collective group of folks, get through this and realize the blessings of it and stay healthy,” he said. “We’re constantly talking in our family about the clearness of the air, just cutting down the traffic for these 7-8 weeks, has cleared the air and how much the wildlife and nature is taking over. We had a baby owl in our yard for 10 days on a branch. We watched him grow and get bigger and then he was gone. I told my kids, ‘This is something you may never see again in your life.’ ”
Q: When did you know you had the talent to be a PGA Tour pro?
DD: You never really know, but I played well at the U.S. Open when I was 18 in 1990 at Medinah, where Hale Irwin won. I shot even par the first three days and on Sunday I fell apart and really blew it (77). Two years later, I was leading the Tour event in Atlanta after three rounds. That’s when I knew I could compete out there.
Q: How humbling was it for you to have to play the Nike Tour after being a four-time All-American at Georgia Tech?
DD: In a way it was. I didn’t feel like it was where I belonged. I missed Q-School in 1993 and played eight or nine events and finished 11th back when only the top 10 got cards. I had to go back to Q-School and missed the four-round cut by a stroke. I had to go back to the Nike Tour. For the first half of the year, I had a bad attitude. I didn’t feel like that was where I should be playing. I had to take a breath. I had to grow up, basically, and stop being a baby.
Q: It took you a little while to get your first win, but when you did, you won three in a row. What did you find during that stretch?
DD: The first one I won, I was hitting the ball really well, so much so I made a remark to my caddie Mitch, at the time, that if we make a few putts we’ve got a good chance to win this week. I had it dialed in to where everything was launching out of the same window. That week, I got a few new putters. The putter I ended up using that week (a Scotty Cameron Newport) is the one that I won all my tournaments with except for one.
At Kingsmill, I won in a playoff. I realized that it’s not as hard as I made it. I don’t know how to better clarify that because that sounds arrogant, and I don’t mean that to be arrogant. Basically, I learned how to get out of my own way finally and things fell in place.
At Disney, I didn’t play any practice rounds, and I bogeyed my first two holes at the Palm Course and shot 65. It was a lesson to just go play and see what happens and not force things. The lesson I learned was to be cautiously aggressive, play smart and minimize mistakes.
Q: What defeat gnaws at you the most?
DD: The best answer would be ’98-01 at Augusta. All of them. I could have won one, two, three or all four of them. And then the fight at Bethpage in the 2009 U.S. Open. We started back up on Monday and I had to start at No. 3, hit a 4-iron that buried under the lip of the bunker and made triple and still fought back and had an opportunity to win but didn’t.
David Duval lines up a putt on the ninth hole during the final round of the 2001 Masters.
Q: Is there a shot you wish you could have back?
DD: I don’t remember the years but I hit a second shot into the creek at 13 at Augusta. I backed off the shot three times because of the wind. I was back and forth between 4 and 5. Another year, at 16, I had a chance to win and I hit a 7-iron on a perfect line and somehow – probably through adrenaline – it sailed to the back of the green and kicked over. I made a bogey where I thought I was going to have a kick-in birdie.
Q: What do you wish you could have done differently in your career?
DD: I wish I could’ve walked away and let my body heal better than I did instead of forcing myself to play. I wish I had the presence of mind to realize I wasn’t 100 percent and stop and let my body heal.
Q: What part of whose game were you most envious of and why?
DD: I was always awed by how Tiger Woods could hit the ball out of the rough. That was one of the giant differences between him and everybody else. Phil, Vijay, Ernie, me, we’d be hitting a 9-iron or wedge out and he’d hit a 6-iron on the green. His ability to play from the rough was, and is, way underrated.
Q: You gave me an all-time quote at the 2017 Father-Son Challenge that you kept hearing these young pros saying they wanted to play Tiger at his best, and you said, “The hell they do,” except you used a different four-letter word. That proved to be quite prescient, but did you really think he would come back and win another major?
DD: Six, eight, 10 months before, my answer would have been no. If you recall, on Wednesday night on “Live From” we have to pick a winner at all the majors and I picked Tiger Woods at Augusta. I saw something different in his eyes, in his gait and how he was walking and having played with him and competed and traveled and practiced, I saw him again that week heading into the tournament.
Tiger Woods and David Duval on the first tee at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Aug. 2, 1999 at the “Showdown at Sherwood.” (Photo: Mark Terrill/Associated Press)
Q: What’s your theory on Team Europe’s dominance in the Ryder Cup for the last three decades?
DD: The self-imposed pressure of Team USA and continually being asked about it by TV and writers. It’s not a whole lot more than that. It’s almost expectations that can’t be lived up to, in a way.
Q: Do you have aspirations to be Team USA captain in the future?
DD: Susie and I would certainly do it. We’d love to do it, but it’s not something I’ve really thought about.
Q: Who is the current golfer whose game reminds you the most of your own?
DD: Who do you think it is?
AS: Maybe Viktor Hovland, the way he strikes it. He hits a lot of fairways the way you used to.
DD: I may agree with you. Definitely a ballstriker. I wore people out by hitting the golf ball in play and knocking it on the green. Maybe Collin Morikawa is like that. I had distance and I would wear the field out. I say this on TV all the time: You don’t have to be a great putter to win on the PGA Tour. It’s a ball-hitting contest, not a putting contest. You have to putt well, don’t get me wrong, but if you don’t hit it good you are not going to have a chance.
Q: You turn 49 in November. Is PGA Tour Champions appealing to you?
DD: I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I need to make sure it is something I’m healthy for. I don’t know if I’ll play a full schedule, but it would sure be fun to play the U.S. Senior Open, Senior Players and things like that. With the schedule change, they’ll go back to St. Andrews for the 150th Open and I’ll be 50 and that will be my sixth playing of the Open at St. Andrews and then I can play the Senior Open the following week.
Q: Are you willing to grind to get back to the winner’s circle, and how meaningful would that be?
DD: It would be fun. It’s a matter of putting in the effort. It’s not like you can just jump out on the Senior Tour. I’ve got to make sure I’m prepared.
Q: If you could require every player on Tour to read one book, what would it be?
DD: I still read a lot. I’ve had cycles where I do and don’t. Funny enough, my reading vision isn’t so good anymore. I have to either hold the book far away or put on reading glasses. I remember going into the scoring trailer at The Open a couple of years ago and asking if they had any readers in there for my scorecard. I remember making fun of the players 20 years ago that had to do that.
But I go from reading stupid, quick spy novels to a lot of non-fiction lately. I’m finishing up the Passion Paradox. That would be a good one to suggest. It’s about how society tries to tell you to lead a balanced life but if you’re in pursuit of excellence to being a Tiger or Rory or Tom Brady, you can’t. It’s a false premise. Your passion is consuming and you have to figure out that you can’t give equal time to everything.
Q: What’s your biggest pet peeve?
DD: Kids not putting their dishes in the dishwasher. You’ve rinsed it out and set it in the sink. Put it in the dishwasher! What’s the big deal?
Q: How do your kids keep you at your best?
DD: They keep me on my toes, basically. This is a difficult time to grow up. To be a young person in an age of instant information, iphones and all these things makes it difficult for them and makes parenting that much more difficult.
Q: What is it about doing golf on TV that you find satisfying?
DD: I feel like I’m pretty good and I try to be really good at conveying the why of what players are doing. I try to explain the thinking of the game.
From left, David Duval, Rich Lerner, Brandel Chamblee and Frank Nobilo on the Golf Channel set ahead of the 145th Open Championship at Royal Troon. (Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images)
Q: What do you see as your greatest asset as a TV commentator?
DD: Having experienced the ultimate highs and what you’d call the ultimate lows. Understanding how seemingly simple the game can be and also how frustratingly difficult the game can be.
Q: Where do you keep the Claret Jug?
DD: It’s down in the basement. I have the Bob Hope trophy and the Players trophy along with the actual ball, glove and scorecard from the 59. The rest are up in the attic.
Q: What’s your perfect day like?
DD: We’re all learning what perfect days are now, and what really matters. Hanging with the family, doing some yard work, walking nine holes, doing a little fishing, that’s a good day. This consumer society isn’t really where we want to be and we’re realizing that.
