The ball looked like it was about to stop. But David Duval, standing in the bunker from where he had just blasted the ball out, knew otherwise.
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| David Duval responded to his double-bogey quickly, dropping a birdie putt on No. 7. |
"I never expected it to stop," Duval said later, somehow able to smile about the shot that resulted in a double-bogey on the par-3 sixth hole Friday. "I thought there was a chance before I hit the shot. But when it came out where it did, I knew where it was going."
Where it was going, rolling toward and past the flag stick, was straight for one of the famous crowned edges on the greens on Pinehurst's No. 2 course. The ball did slow to a trickle and look like it might stop -- and it would have had it been struck on wet Thursday instead of dry, warm Friday. But it kept right on trickling down over the edge of the green and into one of the tightly mowed collection areas.
Duval followed with a good chip shot, to 5 feet of the hole, but he missed the putt and was left with a tap-in double-bogey 5. Just when it looked like Duval would separate himself from playing partner Phil Mickelson -- who was in the midst of bogeying the hole -- and the other early pursuers, he showed that this Open will not be a one-man runaway.
After amazingly not bogeying the first 23 holes of the U.S. Open, Duval double-bogeyed No. 24.
"I certainly wanted to hit it up next to the hole and make par," he said of the errant sand shot. "But I was making sure I hit it (too long) in error, as opposed to getting an opportunity to try it again from (the bunker)."
Duval had become the only golfer in the Open to reach 5-under just moments before, getting birdie on the toughest-ranked hole on the course -- No. 5. But Duval didn't let his first blemish get to him, promptly going on to birdie the next two holes and get back to 5-under.
At the 398-yard, par-4 seventh, he hit 4-iron, 9-iron to 3 feet and drained the putt. And at the tough 485-yard, par-4 eighth, he hit driver, 7-iron to 14 feet and made that one, too.
"I don't know what the bounce-back statistic is, but I think the reason that I tend to keep going fine after those type of things is because ... I don't care when it's done, because there's nothing else I can do," he said of putting No. 6 completely out of his mind once it was over.
"I've got to play No. 7, and it presents it's own challenges. It's just a progression."
That progression also led Duval to bogeys on Nos. 9, 11 and 16, and birdies at Nos. 2, 5, 7, 8 and 17. So he wasn't about to start griping about the one that kept rolling and rolling and got away.
"Those are things you just can't afford to dwell on if you're going to be successful," he said. "You just put it out of your mind and go on to the next opportunity."
David Duval admits he expected some bogeys.