Daly says goodbye to Masters. Forever ?

The only way John Daly gets back into the Masters now is if he buys a ticket.

Mr. Grip It and Rip It closed the door behind him on the way out of the parking lot Friday, not more than 10 minutes after signing a scorecard with a 1-over 73 on it. That gave him a two-day total of 153, nine strokes on the wrong side of the cut.

Moments earlier, the gallery ringing the 18th green had greeted Daly with scattered applause, a far cry from the hysteria and screams of "You Da Man!" that his walk up the last fairway once inspired.

And just like that, the five-year exemption at the Masters that Daly earned by winning the British Open at St. Andrews in 1995 disappeared. And so, if he never plays his way back into the field, Daly's last Kodak moment on Augusta National's manicured grounds will be a fan calling into the open window of the driver's side of the van, "Have a nice life."

Not quite 10 years ago, a "nice life" looked like a gimme.

Daly burst onto golf's scene by winning the 1991 PGA Championship. He made the field as the last alternate after driving all night from Memphis, and then hitting the golf ball farther than anyone else ever did.

Equipment companies and advertisers fought one another for Daly's signature.

There was talk of all the courses he would overpower, Augusta being very near the top of that list. But the people who predicted great days ahead for the 25-year-old had no idea what was in his past. And it wasn't long before they found out.

He became the poster boy for squandered talent. To the one failed marriage from his college days, Daly quickly piled on two more. The alcohol-fueled crash-and-burn episodes came closer together and with even more frightening intensity. The addictions to cigarettes, sweets, Diet Cokes, were easy enough to mark as his weight ballooned. The trips through rehab, which a writer once described as "a roadrunner going through a car wash," never took.

Then last summer, Daly conceded he had started drinking again, picking up two six-packs of beer to make the drive back to Arkansas after missing the cut at a tournament in Memphis.

His last sponsor and patron saint, Callaway Golf founder Ely Callaway, reluctantly cut Daly loose not long after. The golfer called Callaway on his cell phone while standing on the doorstep of one more treatment facility. Daly said he couldn't make himself go back in, and that he wouldn't quit drinking.

"That was the last time we spoke," Callaway said Friday by telephone from his Carlsbad, Calif., office. "I've been following his career since and wish him the best. I hope it turns out the way he wants."

It hasn't.

The British Open win earned Daly a 10-year exemption for PGA Tour events, but only five years at the Masters. When he teed off Thursday, Daly hadn't won since 1995 and managed only four top-10 finishes in the intervening years. This year, he missed three cuts and his best finish was a tie for 16th. Then Daly opened at Augusta - the course he was someday going to bring to its knees - with an 80.

Making the cut would have required a 68 in Friday's second round - tough but hardly impossible. Greg Norman, tortured by this course in unimaginable ways, did just that after opening with an 80 of his own.

But even though Daly once called the Masters the tournament he wanted to win most, he played indifferently, going as fast as his playing partners would allow. He dropped his cigarette just long enough to hit a shot, then continued down the fairway in a familiar puff of smoke. He left the scoring tent even faster, brushing past reporters and sweeping into the locker room.

There, Daly handed the shoe attendant a tip, packed the belongings of his locker into two plastic bags and left with a large envelope tucked under one arm.

"Guys," he said on the way out, "I really don't have anything to say."

With that, he climbed into a bronze-colored custom van with Tennessee license plates reading "PGA 91" and headed toward the main gate on Washington Road. To get back in next year, Daly would have to finish in the top 50 in the world ranking or the top 40 on the PGA money list. Or, he would have to win or finish among the top four in the season's three remaining majors.

Whether any of those goals are realistic any more, only Daly knows.

"We'd ask John, 'What do you want? How do you want to get there?"' Callaway recalled. "He'd give fast answers, not always thoughtful ones. It was part of his impatience, I guess."