White-hot Duval plays it cool

RIVALS here at Augusta started the day trying to convince themselves that he simply couldn't go on winning. But the thought persisted that David Duval might just own the American tour right now, after his latest triumph in the BellSouth Classic in Atlanta on Sunday.

Experts cannot remember a player going into the US Masters on a hotter streak since Johnny Miller (1974) and Arnold Palmer (1960), both went to Augusta with four tournament victories to their credit. As it happened, Miller didn't make a serious impact that year, but after winning the Palm Springs Classic, the Texas Open, the Baton Rouge and the Pensacola tournaments, Palmer went on to triumph at Augusta.

Now let us consider Duval's credentials. Atlanta, where he shot an 18-under-par 270, delivered his fourth victory of the year; it was his second-in-a-row, following a brilliant triumph in the Players' Championship at Sawgrass; it was his 11th win in his last 34 US Tour events and it broke the American single-season money record, pushing Duval's current earnings to $2,598,300 since January.

Then, of course, there was his tournament-winning last round of 59 in the Bob Hope Classic. All of which makes him a worthy world number one. Nothing like it has happened in the last two decades and for realistic comparisons, one has to go back to the 1972-'73 seasons, when Jack Nicklaus won 10 out of 33 events.

"It's not routine," insisted the 27-year-old, who is now an even firmer favourite to go one better than last year, when he was tied second, a stroke behind Mark O'Meara. "I was nervous at the end. Any time you have a chance to win, you get a little jumpy. "I never envisioned winning four times before the Masters," he said. "It's never easy winning, but each time I've played, I've made sure I'm rested and ready to play.

"I've found that to be the most important thing. That and accepting bad shots more - I know I'm going to hit some and I forgive myself for them a lot more than I used to."

Shielded by those deadly shades, however, Duval currently looks invincible. Which could explain why he doesn't feel the need to practise this week until tomorrow.

By way of trying to emphasise his humanity, however, he claimed that it was because he wanted to conserve his energy. "I'm just trying to make sure I'm rested," he said yesterday. "Because Augusta is such a wonderful place, you can very easily be seduced into starting at 8.0 a.m. and not leaving until 6.0 p.m. You have to be cautious of what you do early in the week."

He went on: "In hindsight, taking that trip up there (to Augusta) last month was very important for me. Now, I'm not as anxious to get out there and check things out. I certainly have no intention of playing today (Monday)."

His current status seems all the more remarkable when one reflects on the Walker Cup at Portmarnock in 1991. That was when Phil Mickelson was the star of the American line-up and Duval was no more than a run-of-themill team member.

"It's really nice and flattering that I might be considered favourite for the Masters," he said. "But it will have no bearing on how I play or how I perform. I can tell you if I'm favourite or Tiger Woods is the favourite, nobody else in the field cares, so I certainly don't."

Wrong, David. Utterly wrong. "We're watching him like we did Nick Price on his big run in the early 1990s or Freddie (Couples) when he was running good for a while," said Davis Love, who was tied seventh in Atlanta. "He's had a long, long run and we're all trying to figure out how to do it ourselves."

Love concluded: "It's just amazing to us that a guy can hang in there that long and keep being competitive without breaking down." Stewart Cink put another slant on Duval's dominance by saying: "This winner sometimes doesn't go out and wrestle the trophy from the other guys; a lot of times he waits around for the gift."

Which is just the sort of mental strength that tends to win major championships. And his rivals certainly care.