There are phone calls that change your life. Job offers. Bachelor party invites (still dealing with the consequences of that Vegas trip in ’98). The occasional call from your momma asking why you haven’t called lately.
And then there’s the call John Daly got on a Tuesday night in August 1991.
It went something like this: “John, this is the PGA Championship. Nick Price’s wife is having a baby. You’re in. You’re the ninth alternate. Can you get to Crooked Stick by morning?”
John Daly could get to Crooked Stick by morning.
He drove through the night from Memphis to Indianapolis. Alone. No caddie lined up. No practice rounds on the course. No local knowledge whatsoever. Most professional golfers spend days walking a major championship course before the tournament starts. They check slopes, measure distances. They chart pin positions. John Daly had never laid eyes on Crooked Stick Golf Club in his life, not one time.
He showed up, grabbed a caddie named “Squeaky”, who happened to be available, and went to the first tee.
What happened next became one of the greatest stories in the history of golf.
Daly led the field in driving distance by a margin that made the other professionals look like they were hitting different equipment. It was kind of ridiculous. Nobody was swinging it like Long John that weekend. He attacked Crooked Stick like a man who had absolutely nothing to lose, because he was, and he didn’t. He was the ninth alternate. Nobody knew his name. Nobody expected anything.
He won by THREE shots.
Three shots. Over a field that included the best players in the world. No practice round. No game plan beyond “hit it as hard as humanly possible and figure out the rest later.” Grip it and rip it wasn’t just a catchphrase, for a young John Daly, it was a legitimate major championship strategy that worked.
The golf world didn’t know what to make of him. And really, they still don’t. Daly went on to win the 1995 British Open at St Andrews, cementing his place among the game’s legends despite, or just maybe because of, being the most gloriously unconventional yet supremely talented player the tour has ever seen.
He battled personal demons as publicly as almost anyone in sports ever has. He wrote a book called “My Life In and Out of the Rough.” He designed his own line of pants so loud, you can still hear them echo on the fairways where they have been worn. He ran a John Daly’s restaurant. He is simultaneously one of the most talented and most complicated figures golf has ever produced. From Daly himself, Tiger, on his way to the gym, once said to him when John asked him to come for a beer in the clubhouse, “If I had your talent, I’d be doing the same thing.”
But on that August night in 1991, none of that mattered. There was just a phone ringing, a long drive through the dark, and a man with a big honkin’ swing and absolutely nothing to lose.
Golf rewards preparation. Golf rewards patience. Golf rewards course management and strategic thinking and disciplined execution.
And occasionally, certainly not often, golf rewards the guy who shows up having driven through the night, grabs a stranger for a caddie, and decides the best strategy is to swing as hard as he possibly can and trust the results.
Crooked Stick crowned a champion in ’91, but it was that man himself who created the legend.
Winston the Worm has never respected a man more. And this author can’t get enough John Daly.
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