ESPN Golf

CBS is refusing to air a commercial which appears to show golfer John Daly grabbing a beer while driving a golf cart at a municipal course, according to several published reports.

Daly

The spot, for Maxfli golf balls, also features Daly singing in a bar with beer-drinking patrons surrounding him.

Daly has battled alcohol abuse throughout his professional golf career.

"It did not meet the standards of the CBS network," spokeswoman LeslieAnn Wade said Tuesday, quoted in The Los Angeles Times. "Any implied or direct reference to excessive consumption of alcohol would not meet network guidelines."

Wade said that the CBS guidelines do not allow alcoholic beverages to appear in ads when an activity involves a level of alertness, the paper reported.

Maxfli said the beverage is ginger ale, according to The New York Times.

The spot has appeared on Golf Channel.

"Although the spot passed our criteria," Golf Channel spokesman Dan Higgins said in The Times, "and our mature audience is more familiar with John Daly as one of golf's larger-than-life characters, we're sensitive to the issues at hand."

"We went into this with the idea that John Daly is fun, exciting and approachable," Bob Maggiore, senior director of marketing for TaylorMade-Adidas of Carlsbad, Calif., told the L.A. Times. "In hindsight, maybe we should have seen the risk. But we looked at John Daly as someone who lights up a room, not someone with a troubled past."

Maggiore told The New York Times that the ad isn't about alcohol. "This is a spot that is supposed to be fun and exciting and show the brand to be fun and accessible."

He added that carrying a beer while driving a golf cart isn't uncommon.

"If there were rules for alcohol on a golf course," Maggiore told The New York Times, "there'd be a sobriety check on the 10th green."

Daly has not commented on the ads.