Last year Jay Haas became the oldest player in PGA Tour history to make a cut when he reached the weekend at the Zurich Classic at 68 years old while playing along side his son Bill in the two-man team event. Unfortunately for John Daly and David Duval, they could not replicate that senior-circuit magic this week in New Orleans.

There’s no doubting what Daly and Duval have accomplished in their careers, with the latter reaching World No. 1 and winning the 2001 Open while the former captured two majors and flourished as one of the game’s more colourful and popular personalities. But working together at the tour’s team-centric event at TPC Louisiana proved to be a rough go. After shooting a three-over 75 in Thursday’s best-ball format, Friday’s alternate shot proved to be too much of an obstacle for Daly and Duval to overcome.

With Friday’s times moved up due to incoming storms, the pair of 50-somethings teed off at 7am, opened with three bogeys and two doubles in their first six holes en route to an opening-nine 45. Though they somewhat righted the ship on the back, it was too late, turning in an 11-over 83, the highest alternate-shot score since the event turned to the team format six years ago.

If that sounds rough, well, it is: Daly and Duval finished dead last, 12 shots behind the next nearest team and 30 behind the leaders.

To those paying attention the result is not necessarily a surprise. Duval, 51, has not made a cut on the PGA Tour since the 2014-15 season while Daly, who turns 57 next week, has appeared in 10 PGA Tour events over the last four years, missing the cut in all 10 starts.

Also Duval and Daly had played multiple times in this event during their PGA Tour primes back when it was an individual stroke-play event, and neither had an incredible record. Duval played 13 times with a third-place showing in 1995. Daly played 11 times, but only finished all 72 holes twice.

For those wondering how Daly and Duval were in the field, the Zurich has an unlimited number of sponsor’s exemptions to round out its competition. The team event is not necessarily a format liked by all PGA Tour players, and the fact the tournament does not award Official World Golf Ranking points does not help. The Zurich was also hurt this year by the tour’s new designated-event series, as many stars passed on the New Orleans stop after playing at the Masters and RBC Heritage the previous two weeks. Though a case can be made that up-and-coming Korn Ferry Tour players should get the nods ahead of two de-facto retirees, the truth is it’s not necessarily easy to find 160 players to compete. Throw in Daly’s popularity and Duval’s name recognition and you have an idea of why these former stars were in the event.

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The great David Duval, the 2001 Open Champion who spent 15 weeks as World No. 1, had become one of the prominent voices in golf broadcasting over the last decade, but decided to make a run on the PGA Tour Champions when he turned 50 in November of 2021. He’s currently three events into his second season on the senior tour, having just matched his best career finish with a T-31 at the Hoag Classic.

RELATED: Justin Thomas against golf ball rollback — even if it helps him

Double D getting back into the literal swing of things has led to far less TV time, which means we get to hear his takes on hot-button issues far less frequently. Speaking on The Loop podcast, Duval gave his take on the USGA and R&A’s rollback announcement, which seemed to align with what two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas said ahead of the Valspar Championship last week.

“I disagree with it,” Duval said. “The game has exploded over the last few years and gotten incredibly popular and people are watching, let’s go ahead and change it and make it harder, make it less accessible. All of us who play this game know it’s the greatest sport there is, it truly is. But we battle the fact that golf is a bit cost-prohibitive and it is a bit time-prohibitive. You go to an NBA game and it’s over in two hours and 15 minutes. You commit to play a round of golf, you’re in for six hours, and it’s not a cheap game to play.

“And then I go to, who is going to bear the cost of these manufacturers having to retool? And I don’t understand the science of it, so I can’t necessarily address it, but what did they say? 127mph swing speed, 10 degrees launch at 2200rpm. I mean, who does that?”

Little did Duval know that he and Brandel Chamblee, his former sparring opponent on Golf Channel, aligned on this issue. Last week, in a lengthy, informative Twitter thread, Chamblee railed against the announcement, saying that it “implies the game is broken, when in fact it has never been healthier.” When Duval was reminded he and Brandel actually agreed on something, he had the perfect response.

“Easy now,” Duval said, laughing. “I’ve seen a few articles and things he’s said and written, and he explains it well. You know, he and I butted heads a lot, but the man works very hard. He’s very prepared. He certainly has his points and his opinions, and I didn’t always agree, but you’ve got to give him credit.”

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By Dave Shedloski
It sounds as if we will be seeing a lot more of David Duval on Golf Channel this year. Not sitting behind a microphone, mind you, but standing next to a golf ball.

The former World No. 1 makes his debut on the PGA Tour Champions Thursday at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai in Ka’upulehu-Kona, Hawaii, the first of up to perhaps 20 events he’ll play now that he is 50 years old.

“Just the opportunity to build a full schedule, to know when I’m going to play, get into that routine of packing and traveling and all those things is going to be good,” said Duval, who tees off at 5 p.m. ET with Vijay Singh and Mike Weir at Hualalai Golf Club. “I haven’t entirely looked at the schedule and gone through it all, but I’m thinking roughly in the neighborhood of 20 [starts]. A full schedule, I guess, is the way to put it. Figuring out with family, with the kids, all those things, where to build breaks, where they can come, things like that.”

As for his television work with Golf Channel, and how that will fit into his schedule, Duval was more circumspect. “That’s a decision that hasn’t been made yet,” he said. “Right now, it’s about hitting the little white ball into the fairway and knocking it onto the green.”

Duval is the latest major champion to turn 50 in recent years, joining the likes of Weir, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk and fellow broadcaster Rich Beem. He won 13 times on the PGA Tour, including the 1999 Players and the 2001 Open Championship. Another of his victories came in Hawaii at the ’99 Sentry Tournament of Champions, which he won by nine strokes. He spent 15 weeks as the top-ranked player in the world, but his career got derailed by a series of injuries.

“We’ve got a lot of juice out here right now,” said Weir, the former Masters champion, who won once and finished second four times in his rookie season. “Having David out here just adds to that. You know, we all want to compete out here and win tournaments, but we also support one another and want to see guys do well, and I think a lot of us want to see David come back and play well.

Duval last played in a sanctioned event in July at the TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes on the Korn Ferry Tour near his home in Denver. His only other official start came at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA Tour. He missed the cut in both tournaments, and he hurt his hip at Pebble Beach, forcing him to shut it down for five months. In December, he and his son, Brady, finished T-13 in the PNC Championship in Orlando.

The Florida native hasn’t played in more than a handful of events since the 2013-14 PGA Tour season. The last time he made a cut was at the 2013 OHL Classic at Mayakoba, where he finished T-75.

There is no cut at Hualalai, nor at most other senior events.

Since 1997, six players have won the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in their debut, most recently Darren Clarke last year. The others were Jerry Kelly (2018), Duffy Waldorf (2016), Miguel Ángel Jiménez (2015), Loren Roberts (2006) and John Jacobs (1999).

In addition to Duval, six other players will play in the event for the first time, though Duval is the only rookie. He doesn’t know quite what to expect.

“My golf has been good,” he said prior to playing in the pro-am at Hualalai. “I’ve been working hard, I’m swinging the golf club well, you know, but as I’ve talked about in the past on TV and stuff, it’s different when you’re at home doing things as opposed to when you get into a competitive environment. I just have to get used to kind of that competitive environment.

“Surreal, I guess, is the best way to put it,” he added when asked to describe his feelings about the next phase of his career. “Tremendous excitement, tremendous satisfaction, tremendous pleasure. Really looking forward to what the PGA Tour Champions presents, the opportunity it gives us as players. There’s some nervousness and some excitement and anxious, because I haven’t competed consistently for a very long time, but the opportunity to do that is just putting a smile on my face.”

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By Joel Beall
Former champion David Duval is the latest player to drop out of the Open Championship.

The R&A announced Sunday that Duval, 49, is no longer in this week’s field at Royal St. George’s. No reason was given for his decision; Duval had told Golf Digest he planned on teeing it up this week and had made the trip to the United Kingdom.

A former World No. 1, Duval captured the claret jug in 2001 at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club thanks to a final-round 67. The win was viewed as a breakthrough for Duval; however, it would prove to be his last professional victory.

Duval joined Hideki Matsuyama, Bubba Watson, Matthew Wolff and Kevin Na as high-profile names to drop out of the tournament in recent days. Matsuyama continues to register positive COVID-19 tests while Watson cited close contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. Na is passing on the event due to travel restrictions; no reason was given for Wolff’s decision, making it his second missed major this year.

Duval is replaced by John Catlin, an American who plays on the European Tour. Catlin will be making his Open Championship debut.

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It does not address that, but that’s OK. David Duval did so in the wake of his 20-over par 91 in the first round of the British Open at Royal Portrush in Portrush, Northern Ireland, on Thursday.

Duval, who has a claret jug on a resume that is borderline World Golf Hall of Fame-calibre, took a 14 on the par-4 seventh hole en route to a front nine of 49. It was the kind of hole in the kind of round that might have caused integrity-challenged golfers to walk off the course, or at the very least to avoid the ignominy of having their score posted for all to see by not signing the scorecard and taking a disqualification.

Not Duval. Here’s what he said after his round:

“You have an obligation as a professional athlete. If you play, you post your score. Am I happy about that? Is there some embarrassment to it? I don’t know. But I teed off in the Open and I shot 90 today. So put it on the board.”

Well played on a day he did not play well.

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By Alex Myers
Good news, Rory McIlroy. You’re off the hook for the worst hole of the day during the first round of the 148th Open Championship. Enter David Duval.

The 2001 Open champ will have plenty to talk about when he returns to his Golf Channel duties after a wild first seven holes at Royal Portrush. After opening with two birdies, many on Golf Twitter were pointing out how badly the 47-year-old was beating McIlroy. But about an hour later, Duval had created quite a buzz for something much different.

Nick Faldo relayed to TV viewers that Duval had played the wrong ball on the seventh hole—something Faldo did at the 1994 Open. But that rarely seen two-shot penalty was just the beginning of his problems.

Turns out, the former World No. 1 had already carded an 8 on the par-4 fifth hole. And he would take a lot longer to finish the par-5 seventh.

The official Open leader board first had Duval making another snowman on No. 7. Then it changed to 15 before finally settling on 13. Hey, it’s tough to keep track of that many strokes—and that many different golf balls being hit. So much for beating Rory.

Of course, Duval is a part-time player, so it’s a bit unfair to compare him to the rest of the field. But a 13 is a 13. And a 48 is a 48. And again, people were talking. Here’s a look at his crazy scorecard for the front nine:

“Oh, well,” Faldo said when learning of the score. “We’ve seen a lot today.”

We certainly have. And the good news? It’s still early.

UPDATE: This hole was even wilder than we originally thought. Enough so that Duval’s score on No. 7 was changed to a 14 and the tournament released the following bulletin describing what happened:

David Duval’s score on the par five 7th hole has been adjusted to a 14 instead of a 13. His score for the first round is now 91, 20-over-par.

The adjustment was made following an error in reviewing his score on the 7th hole. David lost his first two balls from the tee and then played a wrong ball for the third ball played from the tee. On discovering the mistake at the green he had to return to where the wrong ball was played but the correct ball could not be found. Therefore he had to play again from the tee for a fourth time under penalty of stroke and distance. He played six shots in completing the hole with the fourth ball from the tee. He incurred a two-shot penalty for playing the wrong ball but the strokes played with the wrong ball do not count in his score (Rule 6.3c).

No further penalty was applied for the score adjustment.

Wow. Guessing the extra stroke won’t be the difference between him making or missing the cut on Friday.

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Long after Woods carded a second-round 71 that included a disastrous quadruple bogey on the infamous par 3, Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee, David Duval, and Frank Nobilo broke down a different drop Tiger could have taken. Since his ball landed on the green and rolled through an area marked with a yellow penalty area line before trickling into the pond, Woods could have played his third shot from the walkway that leads to the island green. And he could have walked away making a much, much better score than 7.

Although usually, this option would make for a similarly tricky shot as the 80-yard pitch Woods opted for, with a back-centre pin, Chamblee explains that Woods could have wound up with about a 30-foot par putt through the fringe. Instead, he one-hopped his shot from the drop area into the pond as well, and until 4:30 p.m. on Friday, his two Bridgestones were the only golf balls that got wet on a day when the hole played easy to a 2.92 stroke average. Anyway, here’s the late Friday segment from Golf Channel’s Live From:

https://twitter.com/mollysolomon_gc/status/1106742255895932929

And here’s a photo Chamblee posted of the potential par putt Woods could have had:

Preparing for our segment last night, I sent this pic to the rules official to make sure we had it right. Tiger could have had a 30 foot putt for par through the fringe on 17 yesterday. The most dangerous hole in golf addles the brains of all us sooner or later. pic.twitter.com/0UKOGWNN60

— Brandel Chamblee (@chambleebrandel) March 16, 2019

In the clip, Duval says he reached out to Tiger and that he told him he wasn’t aware of that option. Ouch. Within two shots of the lead at the time, Tiger tumbled off the leader board and will enter the weekend nine shots behind leaders Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood.

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He never won again.

Nine years later, I had a long conversation with Duval about what happened after Lytham. He suffered a number of injuries in the ensuing years but that, he said, wasn’t the reason he stopped winning.

“Honestly, it was existential,” Duval explained. “I spent my entire life, hours and hours practising, sweating, grinding, thinking the Holy Grail was winning a major championship. And then, finally, I won one. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great feeling, and I’m proud to this day to be able to call myself an Open champion. But I realized soon after that in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t feel any different. I wasn’t happier, I didn’t feel like I was a better person in any way. Something went out of me. It was an ‘Is that all there is?’ kind of feeling. I was still playing great golf when I got to the PGA that year, good enough, I think, to win the golf tournament. But the drive just wasn’t there. I wanted it to be there. I searched for it, but it wasn’t there.”

Duval finished tied for 10th in that PGA in Atlanta Athletic Club. Since then, he has entered 37 majors and made eight cuts. He had one spasm where he became the player he had once been, at the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage, where he finished tied for second. Now, at 47, he’s content in a TV booth, coming out a couple of times a year to enter a tournament.

To compare Rory McIlroy’s current predicament to Duval’s is ludicrous. At 29, the same age Duval was when he won for the last time, McIlroy is in contention these days almost every time he tees it up. In fact, in six PGA Tour starts this year, he has finished in the top six EVERY time.

There’s nothing existential about McIlroy’s game right now. His problem is much simpler than that: He can’t finish on Sundays, especially when he’s in the last group.

It happened again this past weekend at Bay Hill when he shot an even-par 72 to go from second place at the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Sunday morning to a tie for sixth by Sunday evening. He didn’t play horribly, just not well enough, especially when stacked up against Francesco Molinari’s remarkable eight-under-par 64 that allowed him to race past the leaders and grab what turned out to be a two-shot win over third-round leader Matthew Fitzpatrick. McIlroy finished in the group four shots behind Molinari.

McIlroy’s power game didn’t help on Sunday at Bay Hill, where an even-par 72 dropped him to T-6. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

The 64 was the same score McIlroy shot a year ago on the same golf course to win for the 14th time on the PGA Tour—four of those victories coming in majors. Like Molinari this time, McIlroy came from behind that Sunday, charging past the leaders with a back-nine 31 that included birdies on five of the last six holes. Hall-of-Fame stuff.

But McIlroy wasn’t in the last group that day. Since the start of 2018, he has been in the last group for the final round nine times. That means he’s played a lot of good golf. And yet, he doesn’t have a tournament title to show for it.

No one—with the exception of a young Tiger Woods—always wins with the 54-hole lead. But it’s pretty clear right now that teeing off last on Sunday (or on Monday as was the case last fall in Philadelphia when weather delayed the final round of the BMW Championship) has gotten in McIlroy’s head.

So what does any of this have to do with Duval? Simple: They are two of the brightest and most thoughtful people to ever play golf. They don’t look at the world through the prism of wins and losses.

I am not falling back on the cliché that you can be too smart as an athlete. Woods and Jack Nicklaus are both plenty bright and have done fine. If McIlroy retired tomorrow, he’d be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.

There is, however, something to be said for not over-thinking. I think I know McIlroy well enough to believe that this issue dates to last year’s Masters. For the record, he will tell you a million times over that this is completely untrue. But I know how much he wants to win at Augusta to wrap up the career Grand Slam.

Last year, McIlroy started on Sunday at Augusta in the final group, paired with Patrick Reed, who had a three-shot lead. McIlroy had shot 65 in the third round to get into the final group. Reed, leading a major on Sunday for the first time, bogeyed the first hole and had to settle for par at the par-5 second. McIlroy made a nice up-and-down for par at the first and had a five-foot eagle putt at No. 2. A make would have tied him for the lead and given him all sorts of momentum. But he missed and then bogeyed No. 3 while Reed righted himself with a birdie.

By day’s end, Reed had hung on to win—against charges from Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth. McIlroy shot 74—four shots higher than anyone else in the top 16—and finished T-5. Since then, Sundays in the final group have been like nails-on-a-chalkboard for those who root for McIlroy.

McIlroy can take solace in having recorded six top-10 finishes in six starts this season. (Keyur Khamar/PGA Tour)

I talked to McIlroy a couple of weeks after last year’s Masters. It was on his first wedding anniversary. He and wife Erica had been delayed that day returning to Florida from Ireland because the Palm Beach Airport had been closed since Air Force One was there. He was on his way to buy Erica an anniversary present when we talked.

“You know, for me to say I wasn’t disappointed by what happened on Masters Sunday would be foolish,” he said. “But it’s a lot more important to me that I be a good husband the next 20 years than win the Masters. I want to win the Masters and I want to win a lot more golf tournaments. But I understand there’s more to life than winning golf tournaments. A lot more.”

Coming out of the mouth of many athletes, I’d write that off as rationalizing defeat. But not McIlroy. You don’t win as much as he’s won without two things: massive talent and an equally massive will to win. That’s why he’s thrown the occasional tantrum and done a couple of post-round stalk-offs after playing poorly.

But he’s also very dedicated to being a good husband, a good son and, I’d guess someday in the not-too-distant future, a good father. There’s nothing existential in that, but it’s quite human.

I believe McIlroy will win from the final group on Sunday soon. It might very well happen at Augusta because sometimes that’s what truly great athletes do: They break out of slumps in the most spectacular way possible.

McIlroy will beat the Sunday blues—just as soon as he stops thinking about them. Perhaps he needs to take a page from Han Solo’s playbook: “Never tell me the odds.” Just drive through the asteroid field and don’t give it a second thought. Or, for that matter, a first one.

The post Rory McIlroy will win again while playing in a final group on Sunday, but here’s what he’ll have to do first appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

“I said, ‘Whoa, I told you guys not to pay attention to all the noise,’ ” Love recalls lecturing his players. “We were not going to watch the Golf Channel. But they were like, ‘Oh no, we’ve got to watch this.’ ”

Word had filtered to team members about a fiery debate between analysts Brandel Chamblee and David Duval, and they wanted to see it for themselves. Chamblee had questioned the effectiveness of the putative leaders of the American side in recent years, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and how their play had fallen short relative to great players from previous eras. Duval, who played in the 1999 and 2002 matches, countered with a perspective that separated him from his colleague by more than just opinion. “Having actually been out there and done it, there’s more to it than what these stats say. … The dynamic of the Ryder Cup comes into play in that regardless of who you are, there sometimes are forces more powerful going on, and it’s a very tangible thing.”

Love could sense that his players were eating it up. “The feeling was that David was defending us as a team,” he explained. And recognizing the impact Duval was having on them, Love sought an encore, asking the former World No. 1 to address the squad.

“He comes in, tie untied, hanging around his neck, carrying his briefcase from the set,” Love said. “He launched into this very passionate speech, how playing in the Ryder Cup was one of the biggest accomplishments of his career. But it was more [about the fact that] the David Duval that they just saw defending them on TV had walked into the room and was still fired up. We asked him to come back and hang out with us every night.”

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images
Duval was a key contributor to the 1999 U.S. squad that rallied to win the Ryder Cup.

If David Duval one day takes the reins as U.S. Ryder Cup captain, that sequence of events will have initiated it. As it stands, Duval is returning to the U.S. team room nightly during next week’s Ryder Cup at Le Golf National in Paris, but this time in an official capacity. When Tiger Woods segued from vice captain to one of captain Jim Furyk’s wildcard picks, Furyk filled the void with his good friend and former Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., neighbor.

The sports landscape is full of coaches who moved from the broadcast booth to the bench. It’s rare in golf for an obvious reason: team events occur just once annually. The late Ken Venturi, a former U.S. Open champion who served as lead golf analyst for CBS Sports for more than 30 years, captained the winning U.S. Presidents Cup team in 2000, so Duval, who played on that team, isn’t exactly breaking new ground.

But it’s ground he never expected to traverse when it had been so long since he competed in the Ryder Cup.

“When you think about the period of time since I played in one, this is a surprise, but it’s something that’s a tremendous honor and a blessing,” said Duval, 46, who went 1-3-2 in six matches, the lone victory being a win in singles during America’s famed comeback in 1999 at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do, but I sort of figured my chance had passed; we were pretty far down the road. So I’m really enjoying this. Absolutely. And I’m putting everything I have into it.”

RELATED: 9 things you need to know about this year’s Ryder Cup

Duval, who was at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., when Furyk called to offer him the position, had an impact on the Ryder Cup before he ever played in it. Along with Woods, Mickelson and Mark O’Meara, Duval pushed for the PGA of America to allow players to have a greater say in how the event’s charitable proceeds were distributed. In a way, it was a precursor to today’s organizational model, in which players and captains are more invested in the process.

“I don’t know the exact numbers, but it’s probably over $20 million now going to designated charities. It’s made a difference,” Duval said by telephone from his home in Denver. “I’m happy to have been a part of that initiative. I don’t know if this is me coming full circle, if you will, but I can see how you might think that. There’s no doubt that there’s a different environment now, that players have a much greater role in the direction of the U.S. team.”

Duval’s role has yet to be defined fully, but he senses what he brings to the table.

“Jim saw in me someone who has been watching and analyzing these guys, talking about these players, maybe seeing things from a slightly different point of view,” he said. “I think he knows I’m not a yes man, that I will speak up, and I will give my opinion. I am coming at it with a different mindset, if you will, whether it’s pairings or what have you.”

“When he speaks up, we’re all listening, because he knows what he’s talking about,” Love said. “Tiger was really helpful in that the last few years [as a vice captain in the 2016 Ryder Cup and 2017 Presidents Cup] he paid a lot more attention to what guys were doing. He was tuned in to the game. Tiger was great at analyzing players. Duval has been sitting there watching the game as an analyst. He has a wealth of information. Plus, he’s very decisive, and he’s not afraid to give his opinion and speak up. He was the perfect guy to replace Tiger.”

“I think David Duval might be one of the sharpest minds we can put in that team room,” said Paul Azinger, who was a teammate with Duval in 2002 at The Belfry, in England, and captained the winning 2008 squad at Valhalla Golf Club near Louisville, Ky. “He’s a little on the outside looking in, and that’s good. It’s a real signal the amount of respect and trust Furyk and the other guys have for him.”

David Maxwell
In his prime, Duval was considered one of the toughest competitors on tour.

Before a series of injuries derailed his career, Duval was a force as a competitor, winning 13 PGA Tour titles from 1997 to 2001, including his only major, the 2001 Open Championship. He was ranked No. 1 in the world twice for 15 weeks total in 1998 and ’99. Participating in the Ryder Cup again affords him a luxury he seldom has enjoyed since he married his wife Suzie in 2004.

“Honestly, there are a several things that excite me about doing this,” he said. “One of the most satisfying has been the reception from the players and the other captains. They were 100 percent happy about me coming on board. It’s been tremendous fun the back and forth among the captains, and being involved in these decisions, feeling like you’re part of something cool and bigger than yourself.

“But probably the coolest thing,” he added, “is that by far the vast majority of my golf success was before I met Suzie. Yes, I finished second at the U.S Open one year [in 2009], and, yes, I was second at AT&T [Pebble Beach National Pro-Am] the following year. But most of the golf we’ve experienced in our life together has been from the tough side of the game. To get back involved in the game in this way is very special. This is a positive. This is something we can enjoy together.”

There’s no way to divine if this is a one-time experience for Duval or if it’s the start of a process that leads to his turn as captain. Azinger can see that happening. “He’s of that generation with Tiger and Phil and Furyk with a great resume as a player,” he said.

Added Love: “David being there with us in ’16 was important. It set the stage for him to be part of the team this year, and perhaps for years to come.”

Would Duval entertain that opportunity? Of course. But not at this juncture.

“You know, people are asking me, ‘What does this mean for down the road?’ I have no idea. And I don’t really care,” Duval said with his patented frankness. “I’m worried about this one and going over there and helping this group of players accomplish something that no American team has done for 25 years. I’m just trying to do everything I can to help the team be in a position to succeed.”

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By John Strege
Johnny Miller’s currency as NBC’s golf analyst for nearly 30 years is that he is largely unfiltered, that whatever he is thinking he is saying, and it was evident from the outset. It began with the thought heard ‘round the golf world.

“This is absolutely the easiest shot to choke I’ve ever seen in my life,” Miller said as Peter Jacobsen faced a challenging second shot to the 18th green on the 72nd hole of the 1990 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, with the tournament on the line.

The Dreaded “C” Word, he called it in his memoir, “I Call the Shots.” From the backlash (“You’d think I’d exposed warts on Miss America,” he wrote), one might have surmised he was in violation of the FCC’s Obscenity, Decency and Profanity clause.

Love him or hate him, Miller, 71, set a high and entertaining bar, and should he decide to retire after the Ryder Cup, as he has hinted he might do, his will be a tough act to follow.

The question then becomes, by whom will he be followed? Let the speculation begin.

Several names immediately come to mind and are familiar to golf viewers, and in no particular order include David Feherty, Brandel Chamblee, Frank Nobilo, David Duval, Geoff Ogilvy, Justin Leonard, Colin Montgomerie and even Paul Azinger, currently with Fox Sports.

Arguments could be made either for or against each of them, depending on who is doing the arguing, but this much seems certain: There is no obvious choice.

So we turned to an authority on televising golf, Terry Jastrow, who emphatically insists there is an obvious choice.

“The preemptive No. 1 answer to it, which is the home run, I’d launch an all-out assault on Phil Mickelson,” Terry Jastrow said.

We did not see that coming.

A protege of sports and news television legend Roone Arledge, Jastrow is a winner of seven Emmys and produced or directed more than 60 major championships for ABC Sports, including the 1990 U.S. Amateur that Mickelson won.

Jastrow disclosed that he has a friendship with Mickelson and his wife Amy (he produced and directed an instructional video for Mickelson, as he has done for other notables), but that does not disqualify him from making an interesting case.

“I learned so much about television sports from the altar of Roone Arledge,” Jastrow said. “He was a big advocate of the personality of the announcer. It wasn’t just the context with regard to their expertise of the event, but how fun he was. He hired Dave Marr, who was at Winged Foot where Roone played. Marr was a good friend of Frank Gifford’s.”

Gifford was among Arledge’s closest friends, and Marr often joined them for dinners at Jimmy Weston’s or Toots Shor’s in New York City. “And he found out what a great personality [Marr] was. For different reasons, the same with Bob Rosburg. He was a ball.

“We used to bring Phil to the booth with Jack Whitaker and Dave Marr. You know he’s hugely intelligent, very articulate. Been there, done that. But nobody is more fun to have a four-hour dinner with, a four-hour dinner and two bottles of wine with, than Phil.”

Gregory Shamus
Mickelson would be a long-term play who would ease his way into the booth.

Mickelson, however, remains competitive, even at 47—he won the WGC-Mexico Championship earlier this year and made the U.S. Ryder Cup team. He is determined to continue competing, largely in pursuit of the elusive U.S. Open victory.

“I’d go to Steve Loy [Mickelson’s agent] and make a preemptive bid for Phil,” Jastrow said. “He’s likely to be less available just now, but more available over time. I don’t know how interested he’s going to be in the PGA Tour Champions. But I would go to Steve Loy and say, ‘We want to be Phil’s television home for the rest of his life in golf.’ I’d give him as much work as I could now and over time he’d be playing less and you’d be getting more.

“You’ve got to get out ahead of it. Otherwise you’ve got to line up with six other guys [trying to hire him]. Phil’s trying to win the next U.S. Open, but you’ve got to go in and get him for the future. When we hired Nicklaus, we did it on this basis. Look, play all you want, but when you’re done come be with us.”

Nicklaus worked U.S. Open telecasts from 1986 through 1994 and PGA Championships from 1986 through 1990 for Jastrow and ABC.

Another point working in Mickelson’s favor: He’s a major champion. It is not necessarily a requirement, Jastrow said, “but it’s a de facto responsibility that you have major championship winners talking about major championships. You’re not going to have a .120 hitter on talking about how the greatest hitters hit.”

Historically major champions have gotten the 18th hole analyst’s chair, whatever the network. CBS, for instance, has gone from Ken Venturi to Lanny Wadkins to Nick Faldo, while NBC had Lee Trevino before Miller took over. Paul Azinger was the lead analyst with ABC and ESPN, before moving over to Fox to replace Greg Norman.

For those keeping score, that’s eight claret Jugs, four U.S. Opens, four PGA Championships and three green jackets among them.

Dom Furore
Azinger is with Fox, but given he only works a handful of events, perhaps he could be lured away.

It is unknown what the hierarchy at NBC/Golf Channel is thinking, should Miller retire. Understandably, executives there won’t comment. And it’s possible Miller could be persuaded to come back for another year, maybe with a reduced schedule.

But if he isn’t …

Some consider Azinger the best tournament analyst working today. Yet he works only a handful of USGA events for Fox and might welcome the broader audience he once had at ABC. One unknown and a potential obstacle is whether his contract is an exclusive with Fox. Then again, contracts can be bought out.

Chamblee, meanwhile, does not have a major championship, but he has become the preeminent studio analyst for Golf Channel. Studious and opinionated, he, like Miller, is wholly unafraid of the backlash for offering unpopular opinions. In this business, a thick skin helps.

There’s no major on Nobilo’s resume, either, and he also works tournaments for CBS, but he is an astute analyst for Golf Channel and an occasional sparring partner for Chamblee, entertainingly so.

Feherty has only a major sense of humor, but he is smart and witty and likely would flourish on a larger stage. Montgomerie is a World Golf Hall of Famer, though without a major, and, as one player noted, can be just as unwittingly polarizing as Miller has been. Kudos to him for that.

Duval, a British Open winner and once ranked No. 1 in the world, has the playing chops and has joined Golf Channel’s first team of studio analysts. Leonard, too, has a claret jug and a stellar playing record and has shown a knack for working tournament broadcasts. Ogilvy is as perceptive and thoughtful as anyone in golf, but he is only 41, presumably still interested in playing, and is moving his family to Australia.

It is all speculative, of course, but if you’re going to speculate, go big. And no one in this conversation is bigger than Phil Mickelson.

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