BUICK CLASSIC

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: All right. We'd like to thank David Duval for joining us. Let's just begin quickly with some questions.

DAVID DUVAL: Didn't think of it that way. I felt like I needed to make the putt to have a chance to keep on.

DAVID DUVAL: You know, I don't know. Didn't go in. I don't know if I pulled it or just hit a bad putt or if it just broke more than I thought. I just, you know, missed.

DAVID DUVAL: Certainly unfortunate time to being established standing in the fairway with a 3-iron. It's not like you get to putt a peg under it when you restart. But you know, it's not like they set out to do that to you. It just happens. It's not -- I would have preferred to do it, but it doesn't matter.

DAVID DUVAL: The first putt was probably 40 feet and the second one I left it probably four or five feet short.

DAVID DUVAL: Yeah, I've played great golf this week. It's just, you know, I don't know if you all saw it on T.V. or what. I don't know if you were watching it but I don't feel like there should have been a playoff. I hit it close on the back nine and just failed to make any of them. I birdied the 17th hole but missed it from I think side 12 feet, probably four other times. So, and that kind of went through the course of the day. But I played very well and I thought that I felt good all week. Not quite the result I was looking for.

DAVID DUVAL: Absolutely. I don't know, maybe my putt in the playoff, the fourth time around there, did the same thing where it just breaks off, I don't know. It just kind of did the same type thing.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't know. I didn't walk it off. It was 40 feet if it was a foot, I don't know. It might have been more.

DAVID DUVAL: I think. So it's always good to play well enough to win a golf tournament. Unfortunately I got beat in a playoff but shows my game is there.

DAVID DUVAL: Obviously I'm happy for him. The tough thing about this is I just got beat in a playoff five, eight minutes ago, and I have to discuss it all, and, you know, what happened at Augusta, it's not easy to be sitting up here. So obviously, my tone is not going to sound particularly great. It's going to sound like I'm bitter and not happy, but I'm just -- it's not like I had a cool-off period to digest how well I've played this week and to really take a step back. You know, you just get run right in here, and, you know, adrenaline is still going and I'm not happy about it. But, if you give me some time to remove it, I'm very happy for him. I know how it felt when I won. And I did it in a playoff. It can really do a lot of things for your game, and I think Dennis is the type of player who can win more golf tournaments. It's not a fluke that he won here. He's good enough to continue and do more. So I know -- like I said, my tone saying all that probably doesn't sound real great. It's almost 8 o'clock, I just got beat in a playoff and I'm not happy about it.

DAVID DUVAL: Not really. I didn't see where it hit on the green. I hit a pretty good shot for the most part. It's hard to pull out a 4 even where I was, and hindsight is 20/20 and maybe I should have but my understanding is virtually everybody did that, they pitched it on the green and it went right through. That shows me it wasn't prepared very well with the ball bouncing through into the high rough.

DAVID DUVAL: I had 212 yards to the front and it's about 245 or something to the flag. You all saw it. You all saw what Dennis did in his regular play and what other players did. It's kind of ridiculous.

DAVID DUVAL: I don't know if it did or not. You wonder about who all these photographers are because there's so many out there now. You're always having to dodge people. There's carts everywhere. That's just different things you have to deal with when you're playing near the lead or in the lead or in the last groups. There's just a lot of commotion. There's probably an excessive amount and I think the TOUR needs to do something about it at some point. But I don't -- the fact that I hit the shot I did had nothing to do with them. I had a nasty lie over there, and actually thought I hit a pretty good shot. I was trying to hit it right where I did, actually and figured, I mean, we all saw how the other shots reacted on the green but mine hit and stopped out of that rough and that doesn't make sense. I thought I hit a pretty decent shot. Certainly, I felt like I hit a good enough shot to be within 10 feet somewhere, certainly not 20 feet, for sure.

DAVID DUVAL: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

DAVID DUVAL: Certainly. I mean -- absolutely. But more recently I could have done the same thing today. The whole ifs-and-buts-with-candy-and-nuts. I don't think there's a reason to talk about what could have happened, because, you know, it did and like I said I feel like I shouldn't have been in a playoff today, but that's just from seeing where everybody else finished. Dennis could probably come in here and say the same thing, I don't know. He might feel like he should have shot two or three better today. I'll just try to tell you how you thought about it. I missed a putt here I missed a putt there I missed a putt in the playoff. I did the same thing Thursday and Friday and Saturday, you're always missing putts. Not everything is going right all the time.

DAVID DUVAL: 8-iron.

DAVID DUVAL: I think. So you look at who you played against this week and the field was spectacular, to be tied for the top when we're done, I played well.

DAVID DUVAL: Not really. It seems like there's a lot of them,6 through the 13th holes and then I don't know if there's anymore on the golf course so I wasn't really paying attention to them.

End of FastScripts….