Open could mark John Daly's end to big time golf

It could be the last time we see John Daly.
Period.

End of story, a sadder one the sport has rarely seen.

It was there, five years ago, that we watched Daly win the Open, beating Costatino Rocca of Italy in a playoff. It was there, we thought, that Daly had finally chased away his demons forever, admittedly having won sober for the first time in his professional career. He cried and so did we. How appropriate it was for Daly to take his triumphant walk over the Valley of Sin.

The player who will return to St. Andrews this week is far from the one we saw back then, a sideshow rather than a headliner, a carnival act whose career self-destructed amid various addictions and antisocial behavior. Instead of playing at such a hallowed place, maybe Daly should go wrestle a bear. But there are some who will continue to pull for Daly, as they did five years ago.

He has been through rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic.

He has been through another marriage or two.

He has, admittedly, returned to drinking (socially) and gambling.

His game is basically shot, his career is pretty much over.

Who knows? Maybe the sight of St. Andrews will dredge up whatever talent Daly has left and he’ll give us one last blast from the past. Maybe playing with all those living legends in the four-hole exhibition that is scheduled for the day before the tournament will sober Daly up to all he has lost.

Or maybe, as rumors had it recently, he won’t even show up. It used to be easy to feel sorry for Daly, the Hick Who Won At Crooked Stick in the 1991 PGA. It used to be easy to blame his upbringing, and the fact that he tasted alcohol before he could read or write. It used to be easy to believe Daly when he said he was going to straighten himself out.

Now he doesn’t seem to care, so why should we?

He has said many of the same things lately about turning his life around. “I don’t have to do everything all out,” he said at last month’s Kemper Open. “I can do things part of the way. It doesn’t have to be full-force all the time. I realized I can slow down and focus on what’s important.”

He is no longer in denial, as he was back when a friend named Thomas Henderson — Hollywood Henderson — was trying unsuccessfully to get Daly into rehab. He knows he has a problem and chooses to do nothing about it.

The fact that Daly admitted last fall that he was drinking, and his more recent relationship with a casino in Mississippi suggests that he really doesn’t get it.

Alcoholics say that staying sober is a lot harder than getting drunk. I suggest that Daly never worked that hard on his golf game, so why should he work hard on his life. “I don’t drink whiskey anymore,” he said. “I just drink beer the right way, like with friends. I’m happier about myself, happier about my life.”

Perhaps Daly wasn’t meant to be a star, he wasn’t meant to take the golf world by storm the way he did nearly a decade ago, he wasn’t meant to be fastened to the spotlight as if there was an invisible umbilical cord keeping him there. Maybe it would have been easier if the guy whose place Daly took at Crooked Stick had shown up.

John Daly plays from the Road Hole bunker at the infamous 17th. Allsport.

It’s hard to feel sorry for the way Daly has thrown his career away, how he abused himself and, even more, how he abused others. It is hard to feel sorry for the golf executives who wasted millions on him, hoping to make it back tenfold.

Listen to what he says about those who tried to help him.

“I felt like a rat,” he said. “I was listening to everyone else too much. Everyone said, ‘Take this’ or take that. All those medications had side effects and I wasn’t myself all the time. I can look back with a clear mind and see that I don’t want to be there again.”

Maybe there is a shred of truth to that, maybe those who were trying to help him were really trying to make money off Daly. But maybe they just liked the guy, as a lot of us who’ve been in contact with him still do. It would have been wonderful to have Tiger Woods and John Daly at the top of their games, a rivalry for the ages.

Who are we kidding?

Daly never gave himself a chance.

With his exemptions running out, we probably won’t see Daly again at the Masters or the U.S. Open. His 10-year exemption to the PGA Championship is up after next year. He can go back to the Open as long as he’s alive, but sadly, who knows that will be? For those who love watching Daly play-and there are many of us who do — enjoy him this week at St. Andrews.

It could be the last time.
       

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