Duval says Woods has mental edge

David Duval believes it is brains not brawn which gives Tiger Woods the edge over his rivals as he seeks to complete the third leg of an unprecedented Grand Slam.

Duval, defending his Open title at Muirfield this week, insists Woods is not the most talented player in the game of golf at the moment.

But the bad news for Woods’ challengers is that the world number one has the mental strength to keep producing the goods until everyone else cracks under the pressure.

‘‘I think that there are others players as talented,’’ said Duval. ‘‘I think that he is as mechanically sound as anybody. I think he works as hard as anybody, and I think he tends to out-think a lot of people and out-manage his game, out-manage other players.

‘‘Everyone is aware Tiger is extremely efficient and extremely good at what he does. I think if Tiger Woods is playing his best and if other players are playing their best, I don’t think there is as big of a difference between them as everyone thinks there is.

‘‘I think the difference lies in that he has managed to put on a consistently high level of an approach that worked pretty well for Jack Nicklaus - minimising your mistakes, getting it in play, making some putts, getting up and down, and not compounding errors.

‘‘I did a very fine job of that at Lytham last year and other places when I’ve won a golf tournament. That’s how you win golf tournaments.

‘‘I think the difference lies in that he has managed to do it virtually every week he plays where other players have not been able to do that. The difference lies in a mental approach. He waits for people to make mistakes and he manages not to.’’

Duval has been making plenty of his own mistakes recently in a disappointing season that has produced only one top 10 finish in 15 starts and missed cuts in four of his last five events.

His best finish of joint fourth at the Memorial event broke up that depressing sequence of results, and Duval is hoping a similarly pleasant surprise awaits him on Thursday.

‘‘The best I have felt this year was the one time I got into the mix at the Memorial and there was no reason to think I should have had a good week there, nothing leading up to it had been good, nothing after it has been good,’’ added the 30-year-old world number eight.

‘‘Do I think I’m going to wake up cured tomorrow morning? No, I don’t, but I think it can happen this week. I’ve been on the cusp of good things but I haven’t quite got over the edge.

‘‘I know it hasn’t felt good for some time, however it can start feeling good real quick and there’s a little bit of that in what happened at Lytham. I wouldn’t even hit balls on that range because it was blowing left to right at 25mph and that just accentuated the slice I was already hitting.

‘‘So I didn’t hit balls but just managed to get it in fairways, figured out a way to play the golf course and went from there. And I know if I do those things this week that I can win this tournament regardless of how I played the last few months and regardless of how I feel right now.’’

Last year’s three-shot victory over Ryder Cup Swede Niclas Fasth, that brought Duval a first major title after several near misses, was expected to be the first of many.

But his form has never since approached those heights, and the 30-year-old from Florida admitted frankly he had lost some of his drive and enthusiasm for the game.

‘‘I was very proud of my victory last year,’’ he added. ‘‘I don’t believe I quite understood the impact it had until I got to some other places outside the United States and realised the reception of the people was tremendous, and realised if there is a world Open, this is it and I’m a very lucky man to have won my first major in it.

‘‘I lost a little bit of focus after last year. I got side-tracked, I discovered some other things in life and was too absorbed in how I’m swinging the golf club. I seemed to forget that at Lytham last year I won the golf tournament, certainly hitting the ball well, but not nearly as well as I’m capable of.

‘‘I’m thinking about getting back to what made me so good at playing the game, which was simplicity. It was a bit of a slow realisation, things like walking off the course at Bethpage (in last month’s US Open) having shot 11 over and missed the cut and thinking how did I do that?

‘‘I played 31 holes in even par and shot 11 over and that’s just not me. And at Hartford the next week having shot three or four over and thinking, ’How am I at four over when I should have been six or seven under.’

‘‘Those kind of things (make you realise) and then you say okay, my strategy has been a little different, my patience has been a little bit different, and it’s just a matter of correcting those things.

‘‘I’ve played pretty darn good for nine years as a professional, I’ve had about four or five bad months, I recognise some of the things that I’ve been doing and if I can correct those things and go another nine or 10 years and have five bad months in that time, I’ll be a happy man.’’