Back in 1991, John Daly was to golf what Leicester City is to football in 2016.
The sport has thrown up some unlikely winners over the years, but none more unique than the ‘Wild Thing’ at the USPGA Championship at Crooked Stick.
It was the first full year on the PGA Tour for the American, who turned 50 on April 28 and will make his Champions Tour debut this weekend at the Insperity Invitational. He did have a couple of top-10s, but nothing in his CV jumped out when he took up the ninth alternate place and teed it up at the PGA Championship.
Four days and 276 shots of utterly ingenuous and uninhibited golf later, a legend was born.
There have been many players with far greater success on the golf course since then, but very few have been able to connect with the fans like Daly has. Just take a look at his Twitter page and you will understand – he has close to half a million followers, but he himself follows back nearly 143,000 of them.
Daly has been very open about his blue-collar background, and he has been brutally honest about his life. Fans relate to the fact that even someone like him has everyday problems like them – from as mundane a thing as fear of flying to major issues like gambling addiction and marital discord.
In fact, so deviant has Daly’s lifestyle been from that of a professional golfer, 1977 Masters champion Fuzzy Zoeller once made a $150,000 bet with him that he wouldn’t live to the age of 50.
More than his two majors – he later won the 1995 Open Championship at the Home of Golf in St Andrews – Daly cherishes the relationships he has made with strangers across the world.
Golfing icon: John Daly.
Winning the Open: 1995.
“That’s the greatest thing. I hear people saying John ought to be in the Hall of Fame and stuff, and I always tell people, ‘Look, I’m already in the Hall of Fame because I’ve got the greatest fans in the world’,” said Daly, also known for his song-writing and vocal skills having brought out an album “I Only Know One Way” in 2010.
“No matter what, through thick and thin, my fans have always stuck by me. I’ve always been honest with them. I think I have a lot of fans because I’ve never lied to them. They’ve pumped me up and I feed off of them and I always have and probably always will.”
There is no doubt fans love watching Daly – whether he is ‘gripping and ripping it’ (he was among the first players in the world to average over 300 yards), or melting down completely and taking 18 shots to finish a hole (1998 Memorial, sixth hole).
But, on the verge of a new chapter in his life, Daly has absolutely no regrets about his achievements, or the perceived lack of them.
Most experts believe that if he had devoted himself 100 per cent to golf, he would have won much more than two majors and three regular PGA Tour titles.
Reflecting on his career, Daly said: “I’m kind of satisfied with everything in the 2000s. My mind was right, and I did everything I could to try and win golf tournaments.
“But in the ’90s, with the physical ability I had, I wish I would have had the mental attitude back then like I do now. I think I wasted my talent in the ’90s, especially towards the later part of it. All the money was coming in, and I didn’t work hard enough at it. I didn’t do the right things to prepare myself to win golf tournaments. But that’s definitely on me, and I admit that.
“However, that’s just not the case anymore for me. I’m just kind of a grinder now, but I think my mental attitude is 10 times better than it was in the ’90s.
“Being kind of a blue-collar guy, I taught myself how to play the game growing up, I didn’t have anybody coaching me on how to manage a golf course and definitely not how to manage my life.
“Right now, I’m in a great place. If I lived in the past, I’d be dead. So you can’t live in the past. It’s just not worth it. I admitted the mistakes I’ve made and hopefully I’ll try not to keep making them. That’s the key.”
Having played the last few years on various Tours depending on sponsors’ invites, Daly is happy he will have a fixed schedule on the Champions Tour. And he is looking to drive his RV across the USA to take part in tournaments, just like he did 25 years ago when he drove all night long from Memphis to Crooked Stick.
“I’m really excited, one, to make it to 50, and two, just to be able to have kind of a home to play again,” he said. “It’s been pretty tough the last few years not knowing where I’m going to play and waiting by the phone on exemptions and stuff, and now that I have sort of a category here that I can play a few years out here and get a schedule going and play a lot of golf, it’s going to be good for me.
“I am sure I will be nervous on the first tee. Whichever Tour you play, if you’re not nervous on the first tee, then we don’t need to be out here. I just hope it’s positive energy, and I hope for me it’s just going to be a confidence builder as the weeks go on because I’m pretty rusty right now not playing a lot of golf in the last nine months.
“So, everything for me is just a starting over and it’s kind of a learning process on new golf courses, and playing competitive golf hopefully will get me back in that rhythm where you can start playing and get some confidence.”
And before we finished, I thought it would be a good idea to find out John Daly’s thoughts on Leicester City’s fairy-tale win.
“That’s about right. I was saying that it’s like me winning the PGA in ’91. That’s great that they did that, my hats off to their team,” said Daly. “It just shows that in sports, especially team sports, you just never know because it doesn’t matter how much you pay one player on one team, it doesn’t make them the best.
“So my hats off to Leicester for winning it all because they were like the underdogs, and that’s what I’ve always been all my life. Like I say, I’m a fan of theirs now, big-time fan. God bless them for winning it all.”
