What now for David Duval? Off the course, he's found love. He's about to become a husband and a father of three. He says he still loves the game, too. There's just one question: will it love him back?

Golf Digest, March, 2004 by Jaime Diaz

Two sport psychologists who have worked with Duval elaborate. "When David won at Lytham, it meant a lot to him," says Dr. Bob Rotella. "But I think shortly after, he had the reaction of Wow, I thought this would change my life, and it hasn't. And I think that had a very profound effect." According to Gio Valiante, the change Duval sought was based on a false assumption: "David always assumed that because golf was his life, when he reached his goals in golf, he'd find fulfillment," Valiante says. "When he reached his goal, and saw that he still wasn't fulfilled, he truly realized for the first time that golf isn't life."

By all accounts, Duval's formative years were no picnic. At 9, he was the bone-marrow donor to his brother Brent, 12, who within weeks of the procedure died of aplastic anemia. The death contributed to marital strife between David's parents, who eventually divorced. By high school, Duval was a pudgy loner with shaky self-esteem who had immersed himself in a game that allowed him to escape into his own world. He once said his fondest memories as an adolescent golfer were of playing alone in heavy fog.

While Duval was a four time All-American at Georgia Tech he was known as Rock, for the solidity of his game and the stoniness of his bearing. He added battlements to his fortress--wraparounds, a goatee, lower lip packed with snuff, the increasingly chiseled body, an aloof manner. The message: I'm impenetrable.

But the facade always smacked of overcompensation. Duval's true nature is thoughtful, sensitive and vulnerable. For all his success, his competitive history is filled with moments of fragility.

At the PGA Tour BellSouth Classic as an amateur in 1992, Duval took a two-stroke lead into the final round but shot 79. At the 1993 Q school, he succumbed to great expectations and missed the cut in the final stage. After joining the tour, Duval finished second seven times and third in four more tournaments before getting his first victory. And insiders say that Duval has been shaken by the rough and tumble of public life, as when he was criticized for broaching the subject of a player boycott before the 1999 Ryder Cup, or sued in 2001 by his former endorser, Titleist, for breach of contract (settled out of court.)

Duval's inner wrestling match has made him the most ambivalent of elite players. Far more than other tour pros, Duval alludes to the absurdity of being paid huge sums to play a game, its lack of importance in "the larger scheme," the vapidity of the nomadic lifestyle. He has chosen avocations--heavy weightlifting, intense mountain biking and snowboarding--that put his career at risk. He has mused about retiring from the game and running a coffeehouse/bookstore in Sun Valley. "I'll probably slip out at a fairly early age," he told Bob Verdi in Golf Digest in 1999. "Sooner than a lot of people think, probably." Says Mark O'Meara: "David might be one of those guys who could walk. He really could."

The thought occurs: Perhaps David Duval has lost his reason to play. What if he has decided his happiness lies outside the game? Doesn't it transform his lifelong escape into a prison from which he must escape? To finish the thought, is it possible that David Duval is a man looking for a way out?