George Kimball/America At Large: At the Nissan Open in Los Angeles a few months ago David Duval was stopped by a teenage autograph- seeker who asked "are you somebody famous?" Duval eyed her for a moment and then softly replied: "I used to be."

Four years ago he was for a brief stretch the number one-ranked golfer in the world. Less than two years ago he won his first major when he captured the 2001 British Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes, but over the past year and a half David Duval's game has been all but non-existent.

On the eve of the 2003 Masters, he has made just one cut (the Nissan, in which he finished 42nd), and won only $44,876 in seven starts this year ($30,000 of that total came for losing in the first round of the World Matchplay at La Costa). Four months into the 2003 season he ranks 167th on the PGA Tour's money list, and but for the exemption he carries (it lasts through 2006) for his performance at Lytham, he might be in genuine peril of losing his card.

He has pronounced himself fully recovered from a litany of injuries that hampered his performance over the past several years, but is now afflicted by something called "positional vertigo". A reputable golf magazine has reported - and the 31-year-old Duval has not denied - that he was treated with antidepressants under the supervision of a psychiatrist.

As any sports psychologist could tell you, the first step in confronting woes like his involves admitting that the problem exists in the first place, but to hear Duval tell it, he's only going through a bad patch and is about to work his way out of it. Still, the slump has hit 19 months and counting.

"We all know what a great player he is," Ernie Els said this week. "We all go through slumps. He'll get through it because he's got so much talent and he's a great guy."

"It's unbelievable how good this kid hit it - and he'll do it again," fellow pro Jeff Sluman told an Atlanta Journal reporter a few days ago. "And you know what?" added Sluman. "He'll be a better player because of this - and he'll appreciate his better play more."

Given his present dire circumstances, Duval would be the rare golfer indeed if his own confidence hadn't begun to erode, but he insists that better times are just around the corner.

"I'm less concerned than ever," he said after a nine-hole practice round two days ago. "I feel good about what I've been doing and the work I've been putting in. I'm seeing the signs of what I'd like to see," said Duval, who then launched into an examination of his game, sounding very much like the weekend golfer explaining to his club-mates that even though he hasn't been able to break 90 all spring he knows he's striking the ball better.

"When you play poorly, you can't necessarily expect to jump right out of it. It's like when you put on weight, it takes a while to put it on and it takes a while to take it off. That's just how it is. This is a very fickle game," Duval reminds you.

"David's not an excuse maker, but something's different, that's for sure," said Sluman. "You'd have to be an unbelievable human being to play poorly for an extended period of time and have the same confidence you had when you were number one."

"I've had some good times, and I've had a little bit of down time now, but I'm starting to move forward," insists Duval.

To be sure, his career has been plagued by a multiplicity of unlikely injuries, beginning with the time he burned his business hand on a teapot several years ago to the "persistent and painful" back injury which sidelined him for 10 weeks in 2000, and a shoulder injury incurred last year on the snowboarding slopes.

"Now I'm fine," Duval said, though he admitted that his past ailments had dramatically affected his physical approach to the game. "Without question it's impacted my golf swing," said Duval. "My back injury was what first put me down. I couldn't stand up to address the golf ball like I would normally, and I've compensated for that for - I don't know how long? Eighteen months now. That's taken a lot of work, but I've really gotten out of that little slump I had, I think, and I feel pretty good about it."

Although he missed yet another cut at the Players' Championship two weeks ago, Duval was even heartened by the way he performed there, particularly on the Sawgrass course's testing back side.

"Absolutely," he said. "I don't think a player could get around that golf course like I did, like the back nine the first day and the back nine the second day, hitting the shots I did, if he weren't playing well. The problems I had on the front stemmed from hitting it out of the fairway. The first round I didn't hit the fairway once on the front nine, so, the way the rough was there, my 40 or 41 or whatever I shot wasn't such a terrible score."

When you come right down to it, Duval's rationalisations aren't terribly far removed from the babble you're apt to hear on a Sunday morning at any clubhouse in the world: "You know, if it hadn't been for that four-putt on the second hole and those two out-of-bounds drives on the seventh, I'd have had a pretty decent front nine."

Duval is a two-time Masters runner-up, and when he shockingly missed the cut here last year it marked the first time since 1997 he hadn't finished in the top half-dozen (he had finished tied for second, sixth, third and second in the previous four years). Until his breakthrough win at Lytham, in fact, there was good reason to expect that if Duval were going to finally win a major it would probably come at Augusta - even an Augusta National in its new and revamped form.

"It's simply change," said Duval. "It doesn't mean bad or good. There've been changes in the way drivers are made and balls are made. The demands of this course are a bit different from what they were six years ago. That's not a bad thing. It's just a different thing."

At the same time, the combination of the added length and the rains which have softened the course over the past several days make it extremely unlikely that someone is going to come charging out of the pack to overhaul the leaders on the back nine.

"That's a reasonable conclusion to draw," agreed Duval. "You go into the back four or five shots behind, it's going to be that much more difficult to catch up, sure, if the guy plays well in front of you. But now you've got to play well for more of the golf tournament. A guy can't get away with just hanging around and hanging around and then shooting 30 coming home. That's kind of what you want, isn't it? To have somebody play well for the entirety of the tournament?"

It was only three years ago Duval became the first player in 25 years to post four PGA Tour wins before the Masters, but once he won his major he might as well have fallen off the face of the earth. At Augusta last year he went 74-74 and out, and a reasonable bet wouldn't make him better than even money to make the cut this year, either. We could be looking at Ian Baker-Finch in sunglasses.

"But I'm one of the lucky few," insists Duval. "In nine years I was never worse than 11th on the money list. Now I'm lucky, in a sense, because I've gotten to experience both sides of it. I just accept it for what it is."