However, as Daly struggled with alcoholism and a couple of tumultuous marriages, it was thought that he would quickly use up that exemption and slowly fade into obscurity. After all, the most vivid image of Daly in the recent years is not of his hoisting a trophy or giving an eloquent winning speech.
At the 1998 Greater Vancouver Open (now the Air Canada Championship), Daly was captured on television as he was shaking and sweating profusely on a 25C summer day, barely holding on to his Diet Coke, let alone drinking it. It appeared as though Daly had lost his battle with alcoholism. All the years of rehabilitation and sporadic periods of abstinence had come to nought. The bad boy of golf had gone too far.
Now, meet the 2001 version of John Daly, new and improved, at the top of his game and, yes, sober.
Daly remains the longest hitter on the Tour—has been for the last six years and nine of the last ten—and the only golfer averaging more than 300 yards off the tee. But what helped him make that improbable jump from outside top-500 in the world earlier this year to near top-50 at the end of last week is his precise short game.
His putting statistic, which ranks him 44th on the Tour, isn’t that great, but it is his clutch putting, those par-saving putts and long birdie putts in key situations, that has given him a win at the BMW International Open on the European PGA Tour in early September, to go with four other top-10 finishes on the U.S. soil. Daly’s short game has always been overshadowed by his gigantic drives, but now his delicate touch around and on the greens is pushing him up the money list. Can you say “drive for show, putt for dough?”
Daly’s comeback route has been impressive, if somewhat inconsistent. After tying for ninth at January’s Phoenix Open, Daly went on to miss five cuts in his next 12 events, with no finish higher than tied for 11th. He tied for fifth at the FedEx St. Jude Classic, the thirteenth tournament since Phoenix, then subsequently missed three of the next five cuts, including at the Open Championship and the PGA Championship.
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