The taming of WILD THING

John Daly gambled away millions and has been married four times. Now he sells T-shirts in a Hooters car park, but the Major winner has only one regret...

OUTSIDE the gates of Augusta National Golf Club, beyond the order and the beauty, real America rushes by. This is strip mall country. The traffic chokes Washington Road for two miles down to Interstate 20 and some of the great names of American cuisine – McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Taco Bell – scream for custom.

A giant billboard trumpets the money on offer from the Georgia Lottery. Its symbol is a juicy, fat peach. The Powerball is paying out $70million (£48m). Mega Millions is going to be worth $39m.

John Daly is here, outside the gates. Maybe he has always been outside the gates. The 1995 Open champion is standing with his fiancee, Anna, in the car park of a Hooters, the chain of raucous bars staffed by scantily clad waitresses. This one is right on Washington Road, half a mile from the course. ‘Keep your friends close and your beers closer,’ a sign advises customers inside.

Daly abided by that advice for years while in his golfing prime. Now he does not drink. His focus is more on the three trestle tables loaded with John Daly merchandise. He has not played the Masters since 2006 but has been coming to Augusta for more than a decade to sell his product. He still does a brisk trade.

There are loud Hawaiian shirts and T-shirts with a lion logo that Daly has adopted as his brand. It plays to his Wild Thing nickname. There are golf towels and visors and signed flags and autographed items connected to his proudest achievement, winning The Open at St Andrews 20 years ago. He has played five events this year and missed the cut in four. He is ranked 696th.

HIS 45ft motorhome is next to the stall. Daly and Anna sleep in it during Masters week. Daly often sleeps in it when it is parked outside his homes in Clearwater, Florida, and Arkansas. It has Florida plates that read ‘Lion 95’. Much of the memorabilia is inscribed with ‘Grip it and Rip it’, the maxim that has always summed up Daly’s gungho, huge-hitting approach to golf.

A lot of the custom is passing trade from Hooters. A few years ago, Daly parked up by a jewellery store called Windsor closer to the course but it was too quiet. Anyway, the Hooters clientele can relate to Daly. He passed out in one of their outlets eight years back after a savage bender. That was before he had his gastric band fitted and gave up alcohol. He cannot even binge on Diet Coke any more. ‘I drink about a quarter of what I used to,’ he says.

Daly is wearing an uncharacteristically plain polo shirt, a pair of shorts with a florid design and a baseball cap. He shoots the breeze with whoever comes by. He signs everything without being asked. He chats with unrelenting good humour. He poses for pictures. Now and again, he even wrestles with the credit-card machine before handing it to Anna. ‘My fingers are too fat to punch in the numbers,’ he says.

Daly is easy to like. Down the years, he is the type of man who has been too cruel to himself and too kind to others. When he won the USPGA in 1991 in just his third Major, his monster drives, his unrestricted appetites, his wide girth and his easy charm brought him a public following he has never lost. But now there is a world-weariness about him. Here in Augusta, cast as a piece of fading Americana, he talks with disarming candour to strangers and friends alike.

He says he has not changed. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Same as I ever was.’ But that is not true. He has been sober for seven years, for a start. He is older and wiser. He will be 49 later this month and he is looking forward to joining the Champions Tour next year. Daly playing seniors golf is a disturbing image, a bit like Mike Tyson at a whist drive.

But here is the thing: Daly is not raging against ageing as so many do and as many thought he would. He is embracing it like an old friend. It seems to have come as a relief to him. He admires the new kids on the block but he sometimes feels like a stranger among them and yearns for the company of the players who guided him when he was younger.

‘There are so many new kids out there who are so good,’ says Daly. ‘I don’t know some of them. Bad on me, sometimes I forget their names when I see them. I am on the putting green and I have to look at their golf bags for their name.

‘It’s a talented generation coming up. Jordan Spieth’s unbelievable. Patrick Reed has become a hell of a player. Rickie Fowler, Jason Day, JB Holmes, Dustin Johnson and your boy Rory McIlroy. It’s great to see. I am still passionate about golf. I love golf and I am competitive as hell but right now, I am just tired and I don’t just want to go out there. When I am playing really good, I always feel there is a chance I can win the tournament. But I am so burned out I just don’t feel like I could win a tournament.

‘I’m excited about playing the British at St Andrews but right now I’m taking some time off. I usually go overseas for a while after I come here to Augusta. Not this year. My body just can’t take it.

‘I’m almost ready for the Champions Tour next year. I can’t wait to play that. I’m looking forward to seeing all my buddies who helped me when I first got started. Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Watson, all of them.’

DALY seems happier than he has been for some time. He estimates he has lost more than $60m to gambling but, even though there is always a Marlboro Light hanging out of his mouth, most of his addictions are at bay. He says the most important reason he is scaling down his playing is that he is continuing the home schooling of the youngest of his four children, 11-year-old Little John, the product of his ill-fated fourth marriage riage to Sherrie Miller, whomh h he met t att a golf tournament in 2001.

Little John travels with Daly when he plays tournaments. Anna, who worked for the promotional arm of Hooters and met Daly when he was sponsored by them, caddies for him, too. And while Daly chats to the customers at the stall, Anna does the work. When they pose for a picture, she says she is not photogenic. ‘Just take your top off,’ says Daly. Anna smiles. Maybe he has finally found a keeper.

Daly still blazes a trail occasionally. His last official win was at Torrey Pines in 2004 but earlier this year, he shot 65 in the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Like many sportsmen, he is filled with wistfulness about what might have been were it not for the impetuousness of his youth.

‘A lot of people would love my career,’ he says. ‘I’m not satisfied with it. I have worked my ass off from 2003 to now. I really dedicated myself to get back. I just haven’t been able to do it with the injuries.

‘I wasted a lot of my talent in the Nineties because the money was so big and I was making so much money; I didn’t care to practise as much much. That is my only regret. It did didn’t go to my head. It was ju just that I figured that I could ld just go out there and play and I was making millions of dollars on endorsements and I just didn’t take the game as seriously as I do now.

‘I don’t regret the mistakes I made because you learn from them but I do regret my practice ethic from 1996 to 2002. I’m not saying I would have won more Majors but I could have taken my game more serious. That’s what I regret.’

A little further down the strip, a picture of Greg Norman stares out at the traffic in an advert for the department store, Macy’s. Norman is regarded as one of the greats of the game. He won two Majors, just like Daly. Now he is selling clothes, just like Daly.

‘I guess when we get older, we try so hard to get our game back,’ says Daly as he prepares to greet another gaggle of fans arriving at the stall. ‘Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.’

On Washington Road, the traffic is starting to thin out. The Hooters staff are putting up a sign next to the one saying ‘Meet John Daly’.

‘Swimsuit Contest 9pm’ it says. ‘VIP tables available.’ Life outside the gates moves on.