You're a tad over your ideal weight in the sense that when you do something right a guy carrying a bucket blows a whistle and throws you a herring.

You gulp down twenty or more Diet Cokes every day and the caffeine now makes your hands shake so bad your autograph looks like a prescription.

The two packs of cigarettes a day have slowed down your walk so much TV viewers can't tell if they're watching a golf tournament or "March of the Penguins."

Luckily, though, you no longer have to play a grueling 72 holes of PGA tournament golf every week like you once did. Those days – the 1991 PGA Championship and the 1995 British Open championship ring a bell? – seem to be over. Now it's just a bad round of golf on Thursday, another bad round on Friday, you miss the cut and you're outta' there.

You squeeze into your motor home, fire up the engine and another Marlboro Light and then it's just you and the open road, the hands that once turned a golf club into a magician's wand now clenched tight around the steering wheel as your eyes scan the horizon for a glimmer of hope or a flicker of the old promise.

You don't find either of those. But on a more positive note, up ahead there's a big "Homemade Pies" sign and you step on the gas.

You are John Daly and you'd be golf's answer to Britney Spears except for that one pesky, irritating little thing: You had talent.

Oh my goodness, did you have talent.

The swing was the biggest ever, a wrap-around freakish backswing followed by a ridiculous explosion of downswing energy, less a golf swing, really, than something you'd see from a guy who's given one swing with an ax to win a Million-Dollar Lumberjack Challenge.

The ball would make a screeching/whistling noise as it shattered the air and the fans would absolutely gasp and make whooping noises as it disappeared, usually into the middle of the fairway, in a place far, far away.

There's nothing left now. Some people have sleepless nights. You've had sleepless decades. The booze and the cigarettes and the bad food and the wife you said tried to stab you with a steak knife…none of that helped, either.

You've earned a little more than $9 million on the golf course. You told us that in one night, with a head full of whiskey, you lost $1 million in Las Vegas. We believe you. And we imagine now that you're getting pretty close to broke.

You'll be 42 in April. You've made the cut in just 18 of your last 67 PGA Tour events. And not that you care, but you are currently tied for 156th place on the money list. In three tournaments this year you've earned the grand sum of $9,805. We believe the guy whose job it is to make sure Tiger Woods' shoelaces are the same length has made $9,805 this year.

Those of us who watched, who cheered the mammoth swing and the soft touch around the greens and the outlandish things you said and the even more outlandish things you did, well, we figure the ride is just about over.

And we are sad.

Rich Tosches has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Post.