DAVID DUVAL admitted that he almost gave up playing professional golf in recent years after a second-round 70 maintained his position at three under par in a tie for fourth place with Sweden’s Peter Hanson.

The Open champion at Royal Lytham in 2001 is without a win since then and he has not been able to claim a top-10 place since 2002. Competing in his first US Open for three years, 37-year-old Duval had to come through a qualifier in Columbus on Monday, yet he has played solidly through two rounds and managed to fight back after bogeying four of the first six holes in his second round. Normally, such a run of holes would signal a collapse, but not this time.

“I’ve made no bones about it, I think the two Opens are the two most important tournaments of the year,” said the former world No 1, who has missed the cut in eight of the 15 tournaments he has entered on the PGA tour this year. “To come back here was really important for me and I’m very excited about how I’m playing.

“Confidence has been lacking for me for a while. As bad as things got with golf, I never really thought of quitting the game. I contemplated not playing professionally any more because I didn’t want my professional golf life to destroy my recreational golf life. I didn’t want the bad stuff on the PGA tour to take away any desire to play the game at home and I didn’t want to hate the game in such a way that I didn’t want to play with my buddies or with my kids. At one point I was probably another really bad year away from doing that.”

Now he is just another good round away from a chance to compete for his second major.

So, too, is Hanson who only secured his place in the tournament with a spectacular hole-in-one in a playoff with Scotland’s Stephen Gallacher and England’s Richard Bland in the 36-hole European qualifier at Walton Heath in Surrey. He even changed his mind over what club to hit on the tee. “I was pumped up, so I switched from a five iron to a six and I knew I had to hit it really well to land it on the front of the green,” he recalled. “It was just a perfect shot.”

Hanson hit many other perfect shots in his first-round 66, in which he made six birdies. He made only two yesterday but limited the damage to three bogeys for a 71, to find himself among the late starters in the third round, with just three players ahead of him.