by Tommy Gimler
Believe it or not, John Daly found time to step away from the blackjack table and correctly fill out the necessary paperwork to compete in this weekend’s PGA Championship. And after day one, he’s only two strokes behind the leader.
Carl Pettersson shot a 6-under 66 to put his name atop the leader board, but who gives a shit? The real story of the day was Daly, wearing what looked like my high school social studies teacher’s Zubaz pants and his 4-under 68:
But while my teacher was busted fingering a 17-year-old student at his apartment and hasn’t been heard from since, John Daly has been getting both his life and his golf game back together.
He recently finished in the Top 10 at a PGA event for the first time in seven years. The most impressive part is that the tourney was close to Reno, a total hell whose demons in years past would have forced him to withdraw halfway through the first round.
In fact, Daly has withdrawn from 14 of the last 17 PGA Championships, an event that he conquered in 1991. He is ranked 219th in the world and hoping to land big sponsors back in the states.
What is taking Newport, Keystone Light, and the Golden Nugget so long? As I sit here in Sturgis, SD fearing for my life at the country’s largest motorcycle rally, I see 415,000 John Daly clones that also think those sponsorships are no-brainers. Except these Dalys are wearing assless leather chaps instead of pajama pants.
But it’s not just these bikers and their leather-faced wives wearing nothing but pasties. There is a little bit of John Daly in all of us. Some of us like to smoke. Those who don’t smoke, drink. And everybody knows you can’t gamble unless you smoke and drink. That’s why, unlike Eldrick Woods, it’s so easy to root for the guy. Not very many of us can relate to cheating on our supermodel wife with an IHOP waitress and taking a 9-iron to the dome that totally fucks up Thanksgiving.
And if you’re still looking for a reason to root for John Daly this weekend, check this out. His golf bag tomorrow will read “Don’t Fear The Finger.” And just in case you don’t know what that means, it’s to encourage guys to get checked for prostate cancer, not to remind teenage girls to stay away from my high school social studies teacher…
