IT is now 20 years since David Duval made his first foray to the cradle of golf in Scotland.
A fifth-place finish in the 1995 Scottish Open at Carnoustie was a highly creditable performance but there was one particular moment that has stuck in his mind.
On the 12th hole, the American was forced to grit his teeth, shut his eyes and howk a second shot out of the menacing clutches of the gorse, a swipe most crude amateurs perform on a despairingly regular basis.
"A spectator said 'well played, what a wonderful golf shot'," recalled Duval. "That made me feel really good about golf over here. It seemed like the national sport."
Two decades on, Duval will be back in the home of the Royal & Ancient game for this week's Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open at Gullane. Given that the field for the £3.25 million championship boasts the likes of world No 1 Rory McIlroy, defending champion Justin Rose, the captivating Californian Rickie Fowler - who won May's Players' Championship - and the former Scottish and Open champion Phil Mickelson, there are probably not going to be many people rushing to see the world's 1242nd-ranked player as he tees off.
Duval's story remains enthralling. From the majestic highs of Major triumph and the rise to the top of the global order to the spiral into the kind of depths that's usually reserved for the fracking process, the 43-year-old's tale is one that perfectly illustrates the wildly fluctuating fortunes of this most fickle pursuit.
"I understand the struggles of the game, I've lived a lot of them, so you just keep trying and trying," he said, with a sentiment that every golfer will empathise with.
It is 14 years since Duval won The Open at Royal Lytham. Between 1997 and 1999, during a period of purposeful prosperity, the Floridian claimed 11 PGA Tour titles and earned the world No 1 spot on the official rankings. For a five-year spell, he was rival in chief to the all-conquering Tiger Woods. It was Duval versus Woods at the top of the tree.
Then it all crumbled and it was just Duval versus himself. In November 2001, two days after his 30th birthday, he won the Dunlop Phoenix Tournament ... and he never won again. His fall was as spectacular as his rise and one tournament that perhaps encapsulates this plummet is the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. In the 1999 staging of the event, Duval reached golf's holy grail when he closed with a final round 59 to win the title. Six years later in the same championship he limped in with a harrowing 85 during round three.
"That 59 was the closest I came to perfection," said Duval on a rousing round that could have had the great Bobby Jones re-assessing his famous quote that "no-one will ever have golf under his thumb". I hit it next to the hole all day."
In 2005, Duval was level-par to the turn but racked up a triple bogey on the 10th and had two more triples and a brace of doubles, including a seven on the last. "I could have shot 50 for that back nine but there was still pride involved and I said 'I'm not going to shoot 50, I'm at least going to shoot 49'," he said. "I was thinking about how to shoot the best score I possibly could but I was lost at that time. I was at the depths at that point and I was done."
Here in 2015, Duval has no real category for the tour. He has the odd invitation, such as the one that has been extended to him for Gullane, to keep him ticking over and is also dabbling in a bit of television work. After all his toils and troubles down the years, you could forgive Duval for stepping away from a game that has caused much anguish but retirement is not a word in the golfing dictionary.
"I don't believe there's such a thing as a retired professional golfer," said Duval, who still managed to stir the senses of the golfing world when he emerged from the wilderness in 2009 to share second place in the US Open. "I don't think anybody who plays golf professionally could ever say they're retired. That's the wonderful thing about our game. You can continue to play in perpetuity, really."
Alongside the likes of Mickelson, Fowler and Matt Kuchar, Duval is part of a large American expeditionary force heading to East Lothian. There are also a couple of notable Scots making the transatlantic journey, of course. Given the impressive strides Inverness exile Russell Knox has been making on the PGA Tour in the US, Glasgow's Martin Laird has almost become something of a forgotten man. In the midst of his three PGA Tour wins between 2009 and 2013, Laird carried the saltire in the upper echelons of the world game before a dip in form. With a third, a fifth and a seventh on the PGA circuit this season, the 32-year-old, who is 144th on the world rankings, is showing signs of recovery and a return visit to the homeland always inspires.
"The Scottish Open is maybe the most important tournament on my schedule and outside the Majors, it is the tournament I want to win more than any other,"said Laird, who shared fifth in the domestic showpiece at Castle Stuart two years ago. "I feel like I am starting to play really well again and I feel like a really good week is just around the corner."
In this unpredictable, uncertain and humbling game you just never know what the future will hold. Just ask David Duval.
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