Tales From The Bunker

Two years after Brent’s death, when David was 11, he threw himself into golf, reporting to the range at his father’s club every day after school. He could stand for hours in a bunker practicing trap shots. His dedication was an attempt to compartmentalize his feelings and forget about Brent, if even for a moment.

His father, giving him tips about his shoulder turn and takeaway, also tried to add to the David’s ability to forget about Brent; “Play what’s in front of you, David. Your score is just a succession of numbers. Don’t add them up until the end. Don’t dwell on the past.”

The advice kept Duval trained on the present and taught him an emotional discipline that was likely to have been as useful to David, the bereaved brother, as it was to David the gifted junior golfer. It is easy to see why David embraced a sport where one tries to live in the present, completely absorbed in the moment, trying to not think about either the last hole or the next hole.

The moment that started his path to happiness was in 2002 when he suddenly thought “I am allowed to be happy”. A conversation with Bob Rotella, noted sports psychologist, helped David start to reevaluate his life.

In 2003 he met Susie Persichitte, an interior designer with three kids from a previous marriage. He was not looking for a relationship but seven months later they were married. Susie taught him he was defined by who he was, not by what he did. The joy David found in family life helped him understand the deep anguish his parents dealt with when they lost Brent.  But being better able to gauge the depth of his father’s heartbreak also made it harder for him to understand how his father could have left. Duval’s resolve to be a great father reflected the dissolution of his childhood home.

David and Susie now have five children. While it is hard for him to leave his happy home, he plays because golf now gives him great joy. He hopes to begin to play better so his children can see what he can accomplish on the golf course.

David stated “I’m a nice person; It just took me a long time to let people know it.”  The man behind the Oakley shades is no longer hiding.

Until next time,  keep’em in the fairway!

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We are back and raring to go after some time off. Sorry to take it in the middle of the David Duval Saga. Np doubt there have been sleepless nights among our readers wondering how the Duval saga will end .

Duval grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, the middle kid — three years younger than his brother, Brent, and five years older than his sister, Deirdre. His father, Bob Duval supported the family as the head pro at nearby Timuquana Country Club.

David and Brent did everything together. But in the fall of 1980, 12-year-old Brent began to look pale and to complain of fatigue. His parents at first thought he had a stubborn flu. During the Christmas break, he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a lethal disease in which bone marrow stops making the stem cells that generate infection-fighting blood cells. His only hope was a bone-marrow transplant from a compatible donor — David.

The first two biopsies of David’s marrow, which would ascertain its compatibility, were performed without anesthetic. David bore up bravely until the augur bit the bone, and then he screamed and writhed as his father and a nurse held him down. When the needle was drawn, the doctor turned to the other hip. David was given general anesthesia for the four subsequent punctures.

For a few weeks, it looked like the family had gotten a miracle. Brent’s color and energy came back. The doctors said he was progressing well enough for his parents to make plans to take him home. Then fever. Vomiting. Further tests: Brent’s body was rejecting David’s tissue. There was nothing the doctors could do. David returned to the hospital to say goodbye. At the sight of the bald, wasted boy lying in a welter of tubes, David cried, “That’s not Brent! That’s not my brother!” and fled from the room.

On May 17, 1981 Brent died.

His Little League teammates carried his coffin at the funeral in Jacksonville. David endured stoically until a few weeks later, when, blaming himself for the failed marrow transplant, he burst into sobs and cried out, “I killed him! I killed him!”

David’s mother kept a large picture of Brent in the front hall, spoke about him in the present tense, and tried to preserve his room as it had been the day he left. She fell away from religion and into alcoholism. Bob Duval also looked for solace in a bottle, and about a year later, in a decision that confounded his surviving son, left the home. He returned after about a year, then left for good and eventually remarried.

In our final segment David tries to put his life back together and eventually finds happiness.

Until then, Keep’em in the fairway.

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David Duval was on fire from the end of 1997 to early 1999. He won 11 of 34 tournaments including his infamous 59 to win the Bob Hope Dessert Classic.   The world rankings had made official what had been obvious for months: It was no longer Tiger Woods who was the number one player in the world. It was Duval with his signature Oakley shades.  His sunglasses, worn to correct astigmatism and protect his sensitive eyes, were symbolic of his desire to keep the world from knowing the true Duval. His shyness and social anxiety came across as callow self-absorption.

His glory years were brief and he tumbled quickly. His woes began when a sprained fifth lumbar vertebra threw his back out in early 2000. His swing got out of whack as he tried to compensate for the injury. The great fairway driver would stand on the tee not knowing whether his ball was going left or right. Sometimes his back was so tight he could do nothing but lie down on the floor.

By 2004 Duval had fallen to #434 in the world rankings. Of the 20 tournaments he entered in 2005, he made the cut in one, earning $7,630. He was winless in 2006; winless in 2007, playing on a medical exemption; and winless in 2008 and 2009, playing on the last of his lifetime earnings exemptions. Now he has to rely on the kindness of sponsors to get into fields.

Probably no elite athlete has fallen so far so fast. Those are the facts of his career but to really know who David Duval is you have to go back to when he was a nine year old boy and tragedy struck his family. A tragedy that David took most of his life to recover from.
In our next blog we will examine his tragic childhood and how he finally found happiness in his life.

As always keep ‘em in the fairway.

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