Advertisement

John Daly still great at being ... John Daly

SPRINGFIELD, N.J. – You never have to look hard to find John Daly. There was a time when you could follow the wreckage, like backtracking a tornado, but these days, all you’ve got to look for is the pants.

Daly’s pants have been one of golf’s touchstones for years now, ever since he hooked up with clothier Loudmouth Golf, and in the opening round of the 2016 PGA Championship he sported a primary-color-graffiti-emblazoned pair that go by the name “Tags.” He paired them with a red Arkansas Razorbacks shirt. But you could recognize Daly in silhouette; heck, you could know him by the sound of his cannon-shot drives with your back turned.

It’s been a long, hard road for John Daly, a road pockmarked by headlines and lowlights and self-inflicted wrecks. But every year, the road wends back around to the PGA Championship, the same place where the legend of John Daly first took flight a quarter-century ago.

____________________

Daly’s here this week because he won the PGA Championship in 1991, and in so doing, earned a lifetime exemption into the tournament. It’s worth remembering just how astonishing and unlikely that win was: Daly, then 25 years old, was the ninth alternate. He made the field only when Nick Price withdrew because of the birth of his child and none of the other alternates could make it to Crooked Stick Golf Club in Indiana for the tournament.

Daly had never even seen the course before walking up to the first tee that Thursday. But he was two strokes off the lead after the first day, and by Friday he’d seize the lead and never relinquish it.

He became a celebrity over the course of those four days, slapping fives with the gallery while on the course and reveling in the perks of celebrity off it, like box seats at a Saturday night Colts game. (Even back then, though, the broad strokes of Daly’s image and struggles were evident. “He was a typical party person,” his then-fiance Betty Fulford said at the time. “He’s really settled down in the last year.” Again: this was 1991.)

Since that landmark win, he’s returned every year except 1999 and 2013. He’s made the cut only six of 22 times, he’s ranked inside the top 25 only once, and he’s recorded only seven rounds under par. But so what? He’s entitled to that perk, and he ought to take it every chance he gets. Wouldn’t you?

He plays fast, does Daly. Where players like Jordan Spieth scrutinize each shot like they’re studying for a calculus test, Daly basically walks up to the ball, rears back and wallops it, almost like he’s firing a one-timer in hockey.

The effects of three decades of back-contorting swings are starting to show; Daly still has astonishing distance off the tee, but he’s not quite as long, or as accurate, as he once was. His 295.4 average driving distance would rank 47th on the PGA Tour if he had enough events to qualify; he would rank 190th in hitting greens in regulation.

____________________

Back in the ’90s and ’00s, we all wished we could play like Tiger, relentless and flawless. But in truth, we all wanted to play like Daly, longer and farther than anyone else, loose and freewheeling, the DGAF spilling over the edges of a too-full pint glass.

Life’s long enough to become very good at several things, and John Daly became very good at golf. But life’s too short to become truly great at much more than one thing, and John Daly was truly great only at being John Daly. Whether he was drinking, smoking, gambling, singing, marrying, divorcing, or any combination of the above, the only answer to any question that came Daly’s way was “more.”

Daly won that PGA Championship, and four years later he won the British Open, and that vaulted him to the kind of heights where there’s only one direction to go. He would later concede that the millions he earned in both prize purses and endorsement fees turned him lazy, that he gambled away both millions of dollars and his reputation. He hurled clubs into water and insults into the faces of officials. He apologized, again and again, even enduring a PGA Tour suspension in 2008.

But time did what authority never could: slow down Daly, who turned 50 in April. Inconceivable as it seems, Wild Thing is now on the Champions Tour, golf’s victory lap, and he’s playing pretty well. He’s played in eight events to date and has recorded three top-20 finishes. He’s already earned more on the Champions Tour than he did in the last three years on the PGA Tour, and he’s loving the second chance at a career that golf offers after age 50.

____________________

These days, a hard-drinking, decency-flaunting persona is pretty much a norm for American celebrity, so Daly’s 90s-era antics seem moderate, even quaint in retrospect. (Though John Daly with Instagram and Twitter back then would’ve been astonishing.) Guys like Justin Thomas and Billy Horschel are sporting outlandish pants, Beef Johnston has assumed the role of burly everyman celebrity, and half a dozen guys can launch stratospheric rockets off the tee like Daly once did.

But they’re all G-rated versions of Daly, a Disneyfied version of the hardscrabble reality. Where other golfers will orient their workout routines to peak at proper times of day, Daly still smokes cigarettes before, during, and after his rounds. Wednesday, Jason Day talked of needing rest and protein to help combat the touch of sickness he’d picked up from his kid; Daly’s from a world where protein is a bloody steak, rest comes when you pass out on a couch, and treatment for “sickness” involves hair of the dog. To paraphrase an old NASCAR saying: guys like Daly may have lost tournaments, but they never lost a party.

____________________

The 17th at Baltusrol extends 649 yards. That’s more than a third of a mile. And the only man to ever reach the green in two strokes during tournament play is none other than John Daly. (Worth noting: Tiger Woods drove it over the green in 2005, but he’s not here this week. Daly is.)

Baltusrol closes with two par-5s, and it’s a chance for boomers like Daly to close gaps on the field. But Daly can’t manage the feat Thursday. His tee shot runs 330 yards, but his second ends 108 yards short of the green. He goes on to bogey 17 and par 18, leaving him at plus-4 for the day. It’s not a terrible performance; indeed, Daly is tied with none other than Rory McIlroy after 18 holes. He’ll have work to do to get under the cut on Friday, but that’s nothing new.

Daly leaves the course to boisterous cheers; the couple dozen that followed him at the start of the day swelled to vocal thousands by the time he walked up to the 18th green.

Shortly afterward, Daly somehow slips the media gauntlet; before playing partners Padraig Harrington and Vijay Singh have even left the locker room, Daly’s courtesy Mercedes – once parked between fellow PGA champions Jason Dufner and Keegan Bradley – is long gone into the Jersey suburbs. He’s as fast out of the course as he is on it.

But he’ll come back. One way or another, Wild Thing will always come back.

____
Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.