Gullane, Scotland ? The reminders are there for David Duval at Muirfield: the big yellow scoreboards, the long grandstands, the stiff wind from the water and the fescue grass that frames the straight, narrow fairways.

Now if only Duval can find the golf he left behind a year ago.

His first major title, at Royal Lytham, had legitimized a brilliant career and set him up as Tiger Woods’ foremost rival. The British Open victory was seen as the first of many dominoes. Now that he’d learned how to finish off a major, he certainly wouldn’t stop at one.

Duval not only stopped but has been frozen in misery. A year after reaching the high point of his career, he is searching for ways to revive it.

Duval has missed six cuts this year, including the Masters and U.S. Open (that’s one shy of his total for the previous four years combined). He has one Top 10 finish (Memorial) and is buried in the 81st spot on the PGA Tour money list. Even with the British Open title weighing in his favor, the world’s former No. 1 player has dropped to No. 8.

The “train wreck” that Duval called his year at the Players Championship carried “toxic waste,” he said, and the cleanup has been long and costly.

“Do I think I’m going to wake up cured tomorrow morning? No,” he said here on Tuesday as he prepared for the British Open to begin Thursday, with the weather as gloomy as his season has been. “But I think I’ve had four or five bad months and I don’t think it will take me that long to get where I want to be.

“I think it can happen this week. I’ve been on the cusp … I just haven’t gotten over the edge.”

The reasons for Duval’s demise are many. He summed them up on Tuesday by saying he’s been “sidetracked.” Earlier this year, he simply said “life” has happened to him.

In January, Duval broke his engagement to Julie McArthur, his girlfriend of nine years. A month later, he lost 12 pounds because of a virus he picked up at the Nissan Open. Later, he developed tendinitis in his right shoulder on top of the back and wrist injuries he’d endured the previous two years.

Then his golf swing went to hell. Always a tremendous ball striker, Duval was flipping and slapping the ball instead of staying on top of it, which caused his swing to go out of whack.