DALY EAGER TO RIP IT ON CHAMPIONS TOUR
His over-50 debut set for May in Texas
The Champions Tour will never be the same.
Long-hitting and fast-living John Daly will make his Champions Tour debut at the Insperity Invitational presented by UnitedHealthcare on May 6-8 at The Woodland Country Club in Texas.
The Grip It and Rip It star can’t wait.
Daly, who won the 1991 PGA Championship and the 1995 British Open, turns 50 on April 28. He hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines in San Diego in 2004.
Relying on sponsor invitations for most of his tournament starts for nearly a decade, he hasn’t been able to line up a schedule at the beginning of the year. In his last 30 starts worldwide, he has missed 18 cuts. His best finish was a tie for 10th in the 2015 Puerto Rico Open.
“It’s been seven years since I had a good schedule,” Daly said Tuesday during a conference call. “My golf game hasn’t been that great, but I have been working really hard lately and I’m excited to really just get a schedule. ...
“It is more laid-back (on the Champions Tour) — that’s what everybody says — and I’m looking forward to it, and really most of the time, with them not having a cut, you can get really aggressive.”
That was Daly’s MO from the time he shocked the golf world and devoured the course and field en route to winning the 1991 PGA at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Indiana. He never met a flag he didn’t fire at, rarely took anything remotely considered conservative. He played fast and loose on and off the golf course, which attracted legions of fans.
Don’t expect him to change when he joins the Tour for players 50 and older.
“I would rather finish fifth or sixth and avoid being conservative for second place. I was always a guy that would try and win, and I would give up two or three extra spots to try to do that,” Daly said. “Pretty much my whole career I have been aggressive.”
Daly, who missed the cut in his only start this year in the Qatar Masters on the European Tour, said he’s been working hard to get his game in order.
“Hopefully I don’t embarrass myself out there,” Daly said. “I’ll be fresh, but I don’t know how great my golf game will be. I can sit here and hit all the balls and chip and putt all day long, but if you’re not playing competitive golf … there’s nothing better than competitive golf. You go week to week to week and you seem to get better as it goes.
“I’m coming in fresh. I don’t really have any expectations, just to go play and try and do the best I can.”