Open champions are about as far removed from golfing tourists as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are from Sunday league amateurs.
Or so you would have thought.
David Duval doesn’t get the chance to play much competitive golf these days through lack of opportunity not choice. The Open is one of the few events he can count on an invitation for, and the Scottish Open is another.
So since the 2001 winner landed on our shores a fortnight ago, he has gorged himself on links golf like one of his tartan-clad countrymen making a trip of a lifetime.
Duval is starting to look more like a former Open champion than a golfing tourist with every passing 18.
His Gullane and St Andrews timeline has been 77, 75, 72, 72, 67. Yesterday’s five-under par round may prove to be the peak of his steady improvement over the last two weeks, or he could yet have an even lower score left in him today.
Either way, there’s no getting away from the reality that, to tweak Tom Watson’s toolbox analogy, Duval’s hammer and chisel have needed a few days with the blacksmith.
He said: “Competing against the best golfers in the world – the Dustin Johnsons and Jordan Spieths and Rorys – is not a fair fight when I haven’t played a golf tournament in three or four months and they’ve been playing constantly.
“But you know, I faced a challenge yesterday, and it made me feel real good to do what I did.
“I’ve had a couple weeks of strictly paying attention to golf and practising and chipping and putting and doing all those things, and I was going to take advantage of it.
“It’s kind of like a lot of the people from the United States, or really probably from around the world, who have maybe travelled here to Scotland. They don’t play nine holes and go and hang out. They do 36 holes.
“I was doing the same thing. I’m on a Scottish links trip.
“I was excited to come over and play Gullane. Links golf is my favourite thing to do. It just puts a smile on my face – the challenges of it I find intriguing, frustrating, uplifting, all these things.
“So to get to do it for two straight weeks, it’s a blessing as a golfer, regardless of who you are. I’ve been on St Andrews since last Saturday, every day playing golf. Who gets to say that, really? It’s pretty cool.”
If there has been one benefit of losing his PGA tour card and of the invites drying up, it’s been a new-found perspective on the game as a Golf Channel pundit.
Duval explained: “When you’re not playing well you feel like everybody else is hitting it perfect all the time, and so you’re sitting up there when you’re announcing and recapping the tournaments, realising, man, these guys hit some really ugly shots!
“And we all do. Seeing that everybody screws up and does bad things removes a little bit of the pressure of having to go out and play perfectly.”
If Duval came up with another 67 or better he may be given the opportunity to put this insight to good use on a more regular basis a prospect that you would have thought might bring more pressure.
“There’s absolutely no pressure on me,” he stressed. “You all didn’t expect me to be standing here today, did you? Maybe I’ll shoot 67 again, maybe I’ll shoot 77, who knows? But I’ll have a smile on my face and enjoy walking around St Andrews, I can tell you that.”