“It is going to be hard. It’s going to be windy. I’m looking forward to having fun. There are 156 players there and I guarantee I’ll be having the most fun.”

The 2001 Open champion Duval, who made just four halfway cuts in 20 tournaments last year, will partner his Ryder Cup team-mate Scott Hoch and Welshman Phillip Price in the opening two rounds.

Duval replaced Tiger Woods as world number one for 14 weeks in 1999 and had another week at the top later the same season – the last time Woods did not head the rankings.

But the 32-year-old’s game then went into freefall after a series of injury setbacks. He missed the cut at the Masters, US Open and Open last year – he scored 83 and 78 at Sandwich – and then withdrew from the US PGA.

He has not been seen in action since retiring during a tournament in Japan seven months ago and it was thought that he would play at least one US Tour event in preparation for such a brutal test as Shinnecock Hills.

Duval tied for 28th in the US Open on the course in 1995, his rookie year.

On what happened to his swing Duval said: “Practice makes permanent, not actually perfect. What I was ingraining was bad habits.

“I was making a lot of compensatory moves for my back, my shoulder, my wrist. So through the course of that I’m ingraining a bad set-up, a bad address position, a bad takeaway. Those kind of things are hard to get out of.”

The worst problem was with his back. He was sidelined for 10 weeks in 2000, while in 2001 it was tendons in his wrist. In 2002 he was hit first by a severe stomach virus, then sustained a shoulder injury.

And last year he was diagnosed with vertigo and then was bothered again by his back and his neck.

“Through the course of 2002 – although it wasn’t as disastrous as it got – I continued to work and put in the time and practice harder than I have in a long, long time, because I felt like I needed to.

“I continued to do that through the year and as 2003 started the same thing. But then I threw my back again out.”

The vertigo did considerable harm as well.

“That floored me a little more than I let on. Not so much the dizzy spells I had, but kind of a hangover feeling, foggy head, you know. Not every day, but five days out of the week. So it lasted a little longer than I let people believe.”

On top of all that his engagement to long-time girlfriend Julie McArthur ended. “Suddenly she wasn’t there. It was personally devastating,” he said.

“I spent eight years with a really good woman and any time you break up after eight years – married, unmarried, engaged, whatever – it’s a tough thing. To go from having a companion and a travelling mate to being solo again is certainly hard. You know, that’s going to affect anyone.”

Now, though, he is married and ready to resume a career that has earned him over 16 million US dollars on the course and another fortune off it.