ESPN.com - Rough Cut

ESPN.com: ESPNMagazine

Monday, July 15, 2002
Updated: July 16, 9:31 AM ET
Rough Cut

By by Gene Wojciechowski

Our worst fears come true when we finally find him: John Daly at home in a makeshift trailer park, empty pizza boxes peeking out from an open plastic garbage bag outside his front door. The chain-smoking, ex-PGA and British Open champion is sitting alone in his socks as a sad honky-tonk song swells to the chorus: I'm drunk, damn broke, ain't got a penny to my name. Most days I sit here talkin' to myself, but I don't remember my name. Coulda been the whiskey, or the gamblin', that put me here today ...


	Listen to John Daly sing You Don't Know Me, from his upcoming album, This Is My Life.

Except that the trailer park is more like Tax Write-Off Estates, the pizza boxes double as note pads and the honky-tonk tunes coming through the state-of-the-art speaker system are written by Daly and the likes of Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish.

Meanwhile, Willie Nelson is tweaking the master tracks back in his Austin recording studio, and This Is My Life, a CD produced on Daly's very own Lion Hit Records label, should be in stores by early fall. And by the way, Daly ain't exactly living in a '66 Winnebago these days. His 45-foot, custom-made, $1.4 million motor coach, the one with the "PGA 91" Tennessee vanity license plate, has more extras than Daly has endorsement logos on his golf shirts. In other words, the big blond lug is having fun again.

"It's nice to finally be my own person," says Daly, pausing long enough to torch the tip of a Marlboro with his lighter. "I let myself get pulled in so many directions because I made it so fast. I didn't know which way to turn. Being a country boy from Arkansas, then all this money coming this way ... "

You probably know the gist of the Daly golf opera by heart: hick with bad haircut and cartoon golf swing guns Beemer from Memphis to Crooked Stick in Carmel, Ind., as last-minute entry in 1991 PGA Championship -- and wins the thing ... becomes lottery-winner rich ... drinks too much, gambles too much, marries too much ... wins British Open at St. Andrews in 1995 ... self-destructs in slow, public, spectacular fashion ... regroups ... self-destructs again ... ditches his prescription drugs ... decides marriage is a par-4 and takes another shot at marital bliss ... starts strumming a guitar ... starts turning up on leader boards again.

Now look at him -- from cautionary tale to a respectable No.45 in the World Golf Rankings. At the beginning of 2001, he was No.507, just ahead of Happy Gilmore, Charles Barkley and Ray Romano. Sure, Daly still tugs at the arms of the $100 and $500 slot machines, but he swears his limit is $30,000, tops. He isn't drinking anything harder than Diet Coke these days, but by his own admission, that doesn't mean he's taking a permanent pass on liquor. And, yeah, he has the Buddha belly working, and he smokes like an iron ore plant, and the crud-brown, lion-logo rain vest he wore during the second round of the U.S. Open was straight from the outlet mall. But tournament organizers love him. And so do the crowds, who treat Tiger Woods like royalty, but Daly like one of their own.

Flash back to the U.S. Open. Lined up 10-deep near the Bethpage practice range, New Yorkers stress the restraining fence as they press toward Daly. He stops and signs hats, flagstick flags and Open programs with his green Magic Marker, even posing for a photo with someone's stunned baby.

"Hey, Big John!" shouts a fan. "Can I have your glove?"

"I'll take the shirt," says another.

"And that bracelet looks nice too," says the guy next to him, admiring the gold on Daly's wrist.

By Open's end, Daly is in next-to-last place. And yet, when he sinks his par putt for a grind-it-out, 3-over-par 73 on Sunday, the roar from the 18th- hole grandstands rivals that given to Woods almost eight hours later. A couple of years ago, says boyhood friend and manager Donnie Crabtree, "John probably would have shot a 91."

Instead, Daly blows a kiss to the crowd, signs his scorecard, hugs wife Sherrie, collects stepson Austin in his arms and then makes a beeline for his courtesy van parked in front of the clubhouse.

"Did you hear them?" he says, overwhelmed by the lovefest. "It's, 'C'mon, man, you can still win.' I'm 24 over par. I'm 29 out of the lead."


	The rain in Daly's life has moved on.

That's the thing about the 36-year-old Daly: Nobody seems to mind that his game is also doing rehab. One week he just makes the cut at Bethpage. The next he misses the line at the Greater Hartford Open. Still, he remains the Tour's second-biggest draw and makes a fortune overseas in appearance money. He's the big hitter in Pinnacle's national ad campaign, and Nextel sticks him on billboards. Plus, you'd need John Nash to count all the brand names on his golf attire and bag.

Thanks to another sweetheart endorsement deal, Daly, who hates to fly, now tools around in a top-of-the-line 2003 Featherlite conversion coach that's a favorite on the NASCAR circuit and has more perks than a Bellagio penthouse. It takes about $300 in diesel fuel to feed the 500-horsepower beast, which gets seven miles to the gallon. Daly can press the keypad on the meat loaf-size control unit and activate just about everything on the coach, and perhaps even some low-orbiting NASA craft. On the road, he and Crabtree split time in the cockpit.

This 54,000-pound bus has everything but a missile guidance system. With an interior of some 460 square feet, it's about the size of a New York City studio apartment. It has two 42-inch plasma TVs, a surround-sound stereo system in the main cabin, another stereo setup in the bedroom, a GPS to pinpoint the rig's location, four air-conditioning units, a diesel-fired hot-water heating system, a diesel generator, 180 gallons of stored fresh water, two electric-powered automatic awnings, intercom, kitchen, full-size shower and bathroom, front-door video monitor, rearview video monitor, air filtration system, granite tile floors, mood lighting, indirect lighting, sculptured carpet, lots of mirrors, pullout refrigerator, 20-inch TV for outdoor use, telephone hardline capability and about a dozen other options that would mean something only if you were a gearhead or a coach salesman on commission.

At the Open, Daly's bus sits next to Davis Love III's rig, which -- incredibly -- might have even more gadgets than the Dalymobile. Fifteen-year Tour vet Jay Don Blake is here too, slumming in a $300,000 coach. The scene looks like a mini-KOA campground for rich guys with nice swing planes.

"This is my fourth coach," says Daly, leaning back on the leather sofa, playing a few chords on his just-delivered A. Davis acoustic guitar. (Daly's signature phrase, "Grip It and Rip It," is inset under the frets.) "In '92 I got my first coach and had it for two, three years. My wife hated it."

Wives. Ask Daly to list the three smartest and dumbest things he's ever done, and it doesn't take long for better halves to come into play.

Smartest: "Getting off medications, following my heart and my mind -- which means living my life on my own, close to people I trust and who love me -- and not letting anybody change my golf swing."

Dumbest: "Got married three times."

But without wives Nos. 1, 2 and 3, Daly couldn't have written "All My Exes (Wear Rolexes)," which features these playful verses:

Yolanda she was kinda fond of
How I made her feel
And all my buddies used to ask me
If they were real
Now Nikki she was really tricky
She loved to squeal
And Debbie got a little heavy
But that ain't no big deal.

Bono he's not, but Daly is serious about his music. He owns 48 different guitars, including ones given to him by Rucker, Nelson, Joe Walsh, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan. As with golf, he's never taken a lesson, just a few playing tips here and there. Out of habit, he starts strumming the chords for Eric Clapton's "Tears In Heaven," the first song Daly learned to play. And not long ago at his annual bash for the Mid-South Make-A-Wish Foundation, a scared-stiff Daly crooned away.

"It's all from the heart," he says. And he isn't afraid to bare his soul in his lyrics. "All My Exes" is a takeoff on what he calls "the little JD Starter Kit" -- Daly divorce shorthand for the Rolexes and pricey bracelets he used to buy his wives. Think of the whole CD as John Daly's musical autobiography.

Rucker, who collaborated on two of the songs, cried the first time he heard the title track, which Daly wrote during his 1997 rehab stay at Betty Ford. And to pay tribute to the folks who line the fairway ropes, Daly wrote "Mr. Fan." Sitting alone in a rental house after struggling through another brutal round a few years ago, Daly scrawled the words on the back of a Pizza Hut box. A musician friend, Daron Norwood, put it to music:

Wish I could change things
My eyes swell up with tears
Haven't seen my name on top
Of the leader board in years
But I've still got you
Got you, Mr. Fan.


	Daly may sing the blues, but he isn't living them.

"John's finally a little more at peace with himself," says Crabtree. "He doesn't fight anything anymore. He just tries to live his own life his own way."

Most everything is new and improved in John Daly's life -- except his signature swing and his love for all things Razorback. He traded in the BMW years ago for a Mercedes. The Pings he used to win the PGA are in a case at the entrance to the Bud Walton Arena at the U. of Arkansas. The Wilsons he used to win the 1995 British Open are at a course in South Carolina.

Now he's counting the days until the British Open at Muirfield -- one of the few events he doesn't mind boarding a plane for. And even though he's never played Hazeltine National, site of this year's PGA Championship (Aug. 15-18), Daly has a soft spot for anything connected with the Wannamaker Trophy.

Just imagine if he ends Tiger's Grand Slam run at either tournament. The British tabloids would have to bump the Page 2 girl if Daly won at elegant Muirfield. And bring the earplugs if Tiger is 30 going into the PGA and Daly somehow does a 1991.

Daly has more modest goals: grip it and rip it, no 91s on the scorecard, be happy. "I'm still alive," he says. "I still wake up every day, so I'm winning."

Some days are better than others. His prized motor coach got stuck in the mud when he tried backing it out of the park superintendent's yard after his Sunday round at Bethpage. It took three hours before a tow truck could pull the rig free.

No biggie. Daly had his family, Crabtree and his new best friend.

His guitar.

This article appears in the July 22 issue of ESPN The Magazine.