His first tee shot as a member of PGA TOUR Champions awaits, and David Duval, once the best golfer on the planet, is rusty. Having made only a handful of starts each season since 2014, but about to restart his career at the limited-field Mitsubishi Electric Championship on Hawaii’s Big Island, it seems he has forgotten even how to properly pack for a tournament.

“It used to be very routine to get organized and packed up, but it’s not something we’ve done for a while,” Duval, who turned 50 on Nov. 9, said from his home in chilly Colorado. “Susie (his wife) and I are trying to figure that out, and we’re looking at the schedule and trying to figure out travel, and hotels, and all those things we haven’t done for so very long.

“It’s a matter of figuring out how to do it again, you know?”

Ah, from within, there is the calming elixir. Duval is a very smart man who always has excelled at figuring things out. He did so at the junior level (1989 U.S. Junior Amateur champion), and in college and amateur golf (a four-time All-America at Georgia Tech). He figured it out on the Nike (now Korn Ferry) Tour and onto the PGA TOUR, where he won 13 times, including the 1999 PLAYERS Championship and 2001 Open Championship.

Not that he was an overnight success. In the 1990s, Duval was highly touted but initially stalled somewhat as a pro. When he finally graduated to the PGA TOUR, he made 86 starts without winning. What was wrong? Nothing. In late 1997, he won three in a row (Michelob Championship, Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic, TOUR Championship), and suddenly the question of why he couldn’t win morphed into whether he might be the most talented guy out there.

“The questions for me were what, weekly?” Duval said, laughing at the memory. “When is he going to win? And you make it out to be this monumental achievement, and this thing that’s so big. And all of a sudden you get out of your own way and win and it’s like, Well, I really didn’t do anything different. I just got out of my own way and played, and it happened.”

As Duval tries to reignite his game, many may wonder if it can happen again against an over-50 set that still performs at a very high level. After all, since tying for sixth at the Invensys Classic at Las Vegas in the autumn of 2002, nearly two decades ago, Duval counts only four top-10 finishes, his last being in 2011. That’s a long time on hold. If you know anything about Duval, though, you know the self-confidence and belief is bubbling inside the pot.

“I expect to succeed,” he said, the way a surfer on a calm morning knows that eventually he will get waves. “My health is great. I have nothing bothering me, no nagging injuries, which is nice. My golf game is good, very good. I’m hitting the ball well, I’m playing well, I’m swinging well.

“I just have to dive back into the competitive arena and get my feet under me,” he continued. “That’s the only thing that’s missing.”

Duval will indeed dive in with both feet. After this week’s Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai he plans to play the Chubb Classic (Naples, Florida), Cologuard Classic (Tucson, Arizona), and Hoag Classic (Newport Beach, California). Lauded as one of the game’s more astute observers in his role as a television analyst, he will give the Champions Tour his full attention in 2022, hoping to play 20-plus events. (The number of PGA TOUR Champions events, 28, was another thing he sheepishly admitted he hadn’t figured out yet.)

It’s an exciting time, and hard to predict. Not since 2011, when he played 24 events, has Duval competed more than 20 times in a season. He still has pop and putts well, and if he summons some of that old grit and toughness – in keeping with a Hawaii theme, Jim Furyk once said Duval had the biggest kahunas in the game – he should be an interesting competitor to watch.

Suitcase-packing, though, isn’t the only logistical hurdle. David and Susie aren’t yet empty nesters. Although their youngest son, Brady, who played with David in last month’s PNC Championship, is a high school junior at a golf academy in Florida, their two daughters live at home in Colorado. Duval said his family situation is not exactly “just lock the door and go.”

The summer schedule will be one more puzzle to piece together. Once he figures that out, it will come down to the golf, and there is comfort in that. When he finds his competitive rhythm, Duval – who has stayed active in the game as a Golf Channel television analyst since 2015 – believes he will settle in. So do several of his peers.

“A guy like that is so competitive,” said Furyk, who partnered with Duval at the two-man Zurich Classic of New Orleans in 2018 and 2019 and came away impressed. “He strikes it solid, and I love his short game. He chips and putts it beautifully. To play as little as he has played and have that touch, that skill around the greens, that was fun to watch.

“As a No. 1 player in the world, it’s probably difficult for David or a player of his stature to come out after a long break and expect to be the guy he was 10 years ago. I think if he’s patient, and gives it some time, it will be there. But you have to be patient with it. I’ve never stopped playing, and when I take three months off, you just don’t hop right back into it. It’s a lot of work. … You take eight years off, and it takes a little time.”

Added Mark O’Meara, who partnered with a young Duval in the 1996 and 1998 Presidents Cups and played alongside him recently at the PNC Championship, “David is a very good putter, and to win, you need to putt well. I told him, just be patient. Look, it’s Double-D. He’s a world class player. He’s been away from the game a little bit, but I think he’ll do well.”

Duval lived out two very different careers as a member of the PGA TOUR. He was the icy, steely world-class competitor who caught fire beginning in 1997, winning 11 times in three seasons, presenting a stern challenge to Tiger Woods. But soon he was in a freefall.

It began with a back injury at the Open Championship in 2000 at St. Andrews. Other body parts would follow. Trouble with his elbow. His wrist. Knee issues. He once broke a bone in his right foot after getting tangled in a sheet and falling out of bed. The injuries piled up and took a toll.

Duval once said he wished he had protected his confidence at all costs, but he did not, and choosing to play through the many injuries resulted in compensations in his swing that sent him down a difficult road. Some of the lowlights were tough to endure. In 2004, following a seven-month layoff, Duval returned by shooting 83-82 at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock. In 2005, he made 20 starts and survived one cut, tying for 60th at the Valero Texas Open. He shot more rounds in the 80s that season (six) than in the 60s (four).

Duval shot 84 to open the 2006 Masters, his next-to-last start at Augusta National, where he had contended so fiercely in 1998-2001. His father, Bob, a former touring pro and club professional, wondered if he should even play on Friday. The son would have none of that. Duval started by making a double on 1 and then made a quintuple-bogey 10 on the second hole (years later, he’d joke that he hit everything but the fairway on the hole). Standing 19 over par through 20 holes, he stepped up and poured in six birdies on the way in. He shot 43-32, missing the cut but posting the day’s lowest score over the second nine. Duval’s classic take: “I’m close.”

Lesser men might have walked away from golf entirely, but Duval never did. He insisted that his professional results would not deprive him the enjoyment of being a recreational golfer at home.

Understandably, a retrospective elicits mixed emotions from the artist who painted the portrait. Duval won the PLAYERS in his hometown of Jacksonville on the same day his father won a PGA TOUR Champions event. Duval played on winning Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams; was the third player on TOUR to shoot 59, closing with an eagle to win the 1999 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic; and, of course, ascended to world No. 1. It was borderline Hall of Fame stuff. Did he get everything out of his golf that he expected to?

“That’s a really good question,” Duval said. Long silence. “The way I would answer it is, when I turned pro in 1993, if you’d have listed all of that, I would have taken it, you know? But as I was in midst of it, and I was competing and playing, there is a little bit of reflection that I got cheated from injury. I never set a goal necessarily of trying to be No. 1 or win this event or that event. I just decided everything would take care of itself as long as I put in the work to be the best player I could be. As it turns out, in the middle of it all, that meant ascending to world No. 1.

“With injury issues that kept occurring,” he continued, “I look back and think that, had I not had those things happen, I was potentially a 20-plus tournament winner and maybe a multiple-major winner. At the same time, when I get asked a question and you start listing the things that I accomplished, I think to myself, Damn, that’s pretty good!”

After Duval won his major in 2001, there was wide speculation about a letdown. He had scaled the mountain he had spent a lifetime climbing and appeared to be underwhelmed with the view from the top. The Open at Royal Lytham would be the last of his 13 TOUR victories.

“We’re reflecting on things that happened two decades ago, so it’s hard to really say,” he said. “I guess what I would say is that my emotions or thoughts or feelings at the time were reflective of what was going around in my head and my heart. There was certainly a bit of, Is this all there is? But at the same time, there was huge excitement for achieving goals and milestones that not a whole lot of people have.”

Asked if he learned from his time spent in the television chair, Duval said yes and no. He admires today’s stars, but notes that they play a different game than the one he played 25 years ago. They are better – bigger, stronger, with more technology and analytics at their disposal – and that’s the way it should be. This generation has learned from the last, just as the one 25 years from now will learn from this one.

Now he stands in postcard-ready Hualalai, prepared to start everything anew. Duval is a rookie all over again, though on his newest tour, that’s a good thing. The best thing. All sorts of emotions are coursing through his veins as the first tee shot beckons.

“Mostly, it’s a mix of overall excitement,” he said. “When people get ‘do-overs’ in life, it’s usually changing careers and doing different things. In golf, not only do you get a ‘do-over,’ but you get to do the same thing. You get to go play the Champions TOUR. This is something we’ve always done. The biggest key is not the golf itself, but the competitive edge, and remembering competitive golf.”

Soon, David Duval hopes time will freeze and it all becomes second nature to him. The golf, the shots, the scoring, the arena. The trophies. In time, maybe even the packing.