Punting Profiles: John Daly
This is not a tale of a fine horseplayer like Andrew Beyer or an old-school card shark like Doyle Brunson, who stood the test of time because of a willingness to learn his craft and stack the odds in his favour. This is not the story of old time proposition gamblers like Titanic Thompson who stunned us with extraordinary bets or big time hustlers like Arnold Rothstein who shocked us with his audacity. No, this is a tale of talent wasted and the horror of addiction. This is the story of a man without limits who does not know how or when to stop. This is the story of John Daly, golfer and gambler.
One really cannot be too surprised at the life of excess and addiction John Daly lives. He started drinking at nine and has never really heeded any advice that would curb his addictive nature or at the very least, shape his obsessive mentality into something positive, something not so damaging to Daly as not only an athlete but a man. “The people around me…were hoping, of course, that the ‘something’ would be practicing golf…no such luck…what I found was gambling” Daly said.
What is surprising is how much Daly has achieved on the golf course. Self-taught, Daly found he was a natural with the clubs. From a young age he was powerful and he channeled that strength into his swing. By the time he was drinking he could beat his father. Idolising Jack Nicklaus, Daly worked hard to be like his idol. That work ethic did not stick with him. At thirteen, Daly was winning open men’s club championships at his local golf courses. Going through high school in an alcohol-induced haze, Daly ballooned to 235-pounds and when he arrived at the University of Arkansas, the team coach refused to let him play competitively until he lost weight.
Daly lasted at Arkansas three years before leaving in 1987 to turn professional. He made $17,000 playing tournaments in the south and he believed he had it made in the shade, as it were. Daly went on to play in South Africa, where he partied a lot harder at night than he did practicing in the day, and returned to play on the second-tier Hogan circuit. Daly joined the full PGA tour in 1991.
1991 was a watershed year for Daly. After failing to make an impact early in the season, Daly was the surprise winner of the PGA Championship. Daly was the ninth alternate but when Nick Price withdrew and no other alternate’s could make it, Daly entered the tournament and did so without even the luxury of a practice round. Daly went on to win by three strokes, becoming the first rookie to win a major in fifteen years. He also won the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.
The future looked bright for Daly but while there were some bright spots, his addictions and wild behaviour blighted his career and ensured his potential was never fully realised. Daly shocked the world by winning the 1995 British Open at the home of golf, St. Andrews. “There is just something about this course I love” Daly said in a rare moment of reflection. He also won PGA Tour events in 1992, 1994 and 2004. But there were episodes on the lush green fairways that more accurately reflected Daly’s behaviour away from the golf course. There was a shaking incident at Vancouver that saw fans, commentators and fellow competitors wince in sadness. There were disqualifications for not signing scorecards and putting down the wrong scores. There were two PGA enforced suspensions, one because Daly picked up his ball when playing badly and walked off the course. There were last round capitulations and missed cuts and simply, bad golf.
And that bad golf was caused by the quagmire John Daly created as his off-course environment. He had a taste, as the saying goes, for the fast life. Fast cars, fast women, fast action and plenty of booze. Simply, he was reckless. He liked to party hard and loved nothing more than a beer and a bottle of Jack Daniels to get through the evening and more often than not, the day. He claimed that in 1994 he drank a fifth of Jack a day, every day. He has entered programs for alcoholics on many occasions and while he has been through periods of sobriety, they never lasted for any extended amount of time. “There’s no way I’d never drink again” Daly has been quoted as saying, leaving those who care about him and those with a taste for good grammar in a state of disbelief. He made running red lights a habit and he has married and divorced four times, his last wife going to prison on illegal gambling and drug charges.
Daly also had a taste for gambling, if you can call the sado-masochistic art of playing the slots gambling, that was as damaging to his career and his life as all his other addictions. Like the rest of his habits, Daly became reckless and obsessive when it came to gambling, losing incredible sums and causing a perilous personal frame of mind. Daly, in his autobiography, claimed to have lost $50-$60 million gambling over a 12-year period. An extraordinary sum by anyone’s calculations…
One story of Daly’s gambling is legendary. After losing a playoff to Tiger Woods in a San Francisco World Golf Championship event, Daly drove to Vegas and proceeded to lose $1.5 million playing the slots. Daly had won $700,000 for finishing runner-up in the event and lost that in the first half-an-hour of his casino binge.
He used all his British Open winnings and the appearance fees the second major victory bought with it to pay off a $4 million gambling debt. When golfing equipment giant Callaway signed Daly to an endorsement deal, they cleaned up a $1.7 million debt accrued gambling. Daly used his name and recognition to get credit and he maxed it out more times than he cares to remember. Blackjack and slot machines were two more addictions Daly indulged in excess and were two more addictions that were taking him down.
Even today, upon admitting his problem with gambling, he refuses to give up, instead telling himself and the world that moderation is the key to recovery. He figures playing the $25 slots instead of the $5,000 slots will solve his problem. “If I make a little bit, then maybe I move up to the $100 slots or $500 slots”. And the cycle continues.
At times Daly’s addictions plunged him into great bouts of depression. He once begged friend and fellow golfer Fuzzy Zoeller to shoot him because he couldn’t “live like this anymore”. On another occasion he drove his car to the edge of as cliff and seriously contemplated hitting the accelerator. Brilliant Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly claimed that Daly held the world record for failed suicide attempts.
When put in the context of the environment he has placed himself in and his addictive personality, the fact that Daly has been able to win two major golf tournaments and remain on the premier golf tour in the world is a simply remarkable achievement. Though one cannot help but think what might have been had Daly got his drinking and his gambling and his eating and his driving and his womanizing in order. The raw-boned youngster with the power of a bear may have been a headliner rather than a sideshow. But addictions can ruin the best of talent. Gambling. Booze. Women. It surely did with the man they call “Long” John Daly.
This story was first printed on Punting Ace in 2008
Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images AsiaPac
