Daly hopes to defend title despite sore knee
Dark cloud as well as bad driver followed golfer to Masters
THE WOODLANDS — Stuff happens to, and because of, John Daly. Out-of-the-blue major championships. Divorces. Holes-in-one. Twelve-step programs. Gadzillion-yard drives. Cult followings. Three-putts. The occasional fourputt. Once there was an incarceration, too, but that was, well, “a misunderstanding.” So what went down with Daly during the Masters last month surprised no one, Daly included. And it should surprise no one that it went down in a Hooters parking lot.
“You never know what’s going to happen with me,” he said, referencing his golf game, but he could have as easily been speaking about the daily dramas of his Runyonesque narrative.
This time, however, he was 100 percent blameless, truly an innocent — if nearly maimed — bystander. A motorist making a U-turn on Washington Avenue, the chaotic main drag that fronts the Augusta National Golf Club property and is ever the antithesis of the Old South gentility one experiences at the other end of Magnolia Lane, had careened out of control, plowing headfirst into the front end of the bus Daly calls home while crisscrossing the country.
“I mean, you can’t make it up,” he said. “It’s just crazy … (and) scary because she was doing about 40 (mph) coming through there.”
Course suits his game
The bus was at the Hooters because he’s contracted by the chain to hang out, glad-handing his adoring fans and selling them Daly-branded merchandise. When he saw the car approaching, he shoved a friend out of harm’s way, then leaped sideways, wrenching his right knee in the process. That was bad luck. The joint was already giving him problems because of a degenerative condition, related to his advancing years — he’s 52 going on, arguably, 82 — and his trademark girth.
“Osteoarthritis,” Daly said. “Something like that.”
While he might not have been sure of his pronunciation, he’s certain he’s still hurting as he returns to competition, trying to defend his first and thus far only Champions Tour title, claimed a year ago by a single shot over Kenny Perry and Tommy Armour III in the Insperity Invitational on The Woodlands Country Club’s Tournament Course.
At least an MRI came back negative.
“It’s coming along,” Daly said. “The swelling took about two weeks to get down, but it’s sore right in that bone where I twisted it.”
The Champions Tour players ride in carts, though, so things could be worse. And Daly is hopeful there’s a little lingering karma on this verdant patch of Montgomery Count real estate that will help carry him forth with minimal distress and/or detours through the upcoming 54 holes. The tournament begins Friday.
“This has always been a special place, even when the Shell Houston Open was here,” he said. “I always seem to feel I’m going to play good. Whether I did or not, it’s a golf course that suits my game. The greens are always perfect. I feel like it’s a golf course that just gives me confidence. It was a great win.”
The bus has been mostly fixed — it was never not drivable — following his latest wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time misadventure, the particulars of which seem funny now but could have turned tragic.
What hasn’t been repaired, Daly conceded, had nothing to do with the accident. But it has everything to do with why he has given only sporadic glimpses of the immense potential he showed when, from way out of nowhere, he won the 1991 PGA Championship, making him an overnight folk hero to duffers everywhere.
A streaky putter
No, not his rollicking lifestyle, although he’d be the first to concede he hasn’t done himself any favors. Rather, it remains his putting, often the bane of golfing hell-raisers and teetotalers alike. He’s the reigning Insperity champion because he put the ball in the little white cup in 2017. He’ll be an also-ran Sunday if he can’t do it again.
“I don’t care if you’re the best putter in the world, it’s an everyday battle,” Daly said. “We change grasses week to week. And, if the greens feel good one day, they may not feel good the next. My lines have always been pretty good. It’s just the speed. You really have to take that into consideration. I’m not mechanical about it, so that’s why I’m kind of a streaky putter, (like Ben) Crenshaw. But Crenshaw made a lot more putts than I did.”
Perhaps. Nonetheless, when it comes to major championships, it’s a draw. They finished tied at two apiece, a pair of Masters for Gentle Ben and the PGA plus a British Open for Long John.
“Somebody was telling me last night,” Daly said, “that I’m like one of four or five guys that have won on every continent. I didn’t even know that. That was kind of cool. And on every tour.”
Did he overachieve or underachieve? Doesn’t really matter anymore. What he did do, against occasionally long odds, is survive.