My Life in and out of the Rough

by John Daly

  You know what that was? That was me on Prozac. I was on that fucking drug at the time, and I was miserable, and I just fired off shit without thinking before I opened my big mouth. A lot of guys got pissed—and rightly so. Curtis Strange said, “John Daly should crawl back under the rock where he came from.” Greg Norman was pissed, but he did the right thing—he got in my face and asked me, man to man, just what in the fuck I was talking about. I told him that all I meant to get across was that alcohol wasn’t the only thing being abused out there, and that maybe the Tour should take a long look at itself. Greg—who had been ready to kick my ass, I think—was cool with that.

  Curtis? We haven’t been exactly best buds since.

  Sometime near the end of the year, some golf writer wrote, “John Daly used to be contender. Now he’s just a curiosity.”

  That hurt, but I couldn’t argue with it.

  What I could do was prove him wrong.

  FIVE

  THE LION IN HIS DEN

  The middle of the summer, it stays light real late in Scotland. About 8:30, just before sunset on the Wednesday of British Open Week in 1995, I was standing with my agent Bud Martin outside the door of my room on the first floor of the Old Course Hotel in St. Andrews, which looks out over the Old Course along the southern end of its western boundary. We were on the edge of the right fairway at the 17th hole—the Road Hole, it’s called, because the green is mashed right up next to a road that runs along the south edge of the property. Straight ahead, running side by side, are the 1st and 18th fairways—a big, wide, smooth, green carpet. Winding across the fairways, just beyond the 18th tee box and just in front of the 1st green, is a little creek, which is called a “burn” over there, with a couple of old stone footbridges crossing it.

  Way off north of the first tee is a long stretch of beach and then St. Andrews Bay. Lining the 18th fairway on the right are the old stone and brick buildings and church steeples of the town. It had been a sunny, kind of blustery day, but now the wind had died down some, and it was cooling off fast heading into night. Directly across, due east and about two par 4s from where we were standing, the sun was finally setting against the face of the old clubhouse of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which sits just behind the first tee.

  (Helluva name for a golf club, isn’t it?)

  Everything was so peaceful, so quiet. Me and Bud had been out there maybe five minutes, neither of us saying much, just taking it all in. It was so beautiful. So beautiful.

  Finally, I turned to Bud: “Buddy, I own this place. I love it. I’ve never felt more comfortable on a golf course in my life. This is my home.”

  That’s the closest I’ve ever come to flat-out predicting that I was going to win a golf tournament. Golfers don’t do that. Not Jack Nicklaus. Not Tiger. Not anybody. For one thing, the odds are always heavily against you. For another, there’s the jinx factor. But mostly, you don’t want to put any extra pressure on yourself. Bad enough to come down to the last green needing a par to hold on to a one-stroke lead. That wouldn’t be a good time to remember that you’d bragged to somebody beforehand that you were going to kick ass and take names. The game’s tough enough without pissing off the Golf Gods.

  Plus, based on the way I’d been playing, there was no good reason to think I was going to do shit in the 1995 British Open. Since winning the PGA Championship in 1991, when I was named Rookie of the Year on the PGA Tour, I won two other tournaments (the B.C. Open in 1992 and the BellSouth Classic in 1994) and made more money than I could ever have dreamed of. During that same period, I also missed 30 cuts in 90 starts on the PGA Tour, had two WDs and two DQs, was suspended once (and took two months off to avoid being suspended a second time), and got fined more times than you’ve had hot dinners.

  And that was just the golf.

  I also spent three weeks in rehab, got married, became a father, got divorced, got married again, became a father again, went on the wagon, and built up a casino debt of $3.8 million.

  Going into the 1995 British Open, I was a train wreck. And yet somehow I felt pretty good about my chances.

  No, I felt really good about my chances.

  For starters, as I mentioned earlier, I loved the golf course. Loved it. I’m not big on golf traditions like some people. I don’t get weepy because Bobby Jones made a birdie here or Walter Hagen used to drink there—bullshit like that. I don’t visit golf museums and I don’t know much about golf history, if you want the truth.

  But there’s one tradition that I do care about, and it has to do with the fact that St. Andrews is the Home of Golf. Think about that: the Home of Golf! This is where the game began, in a damned sheep pasture next to the beach in a cold, rainy, windy, corner of Scotland. All those bunkers? Caused by sheep burrowing down for protection against the wind. Eighteen holes? That’s how many drinks were in the jug of whiskey those old guys took with them when they played. Golf clubs? Take a look at a shepherd’s stick and think 2-iron.

  I know, I know—most of that, maybe all of it, is bullshit. But I like history stories, and how the Old Course came to be is a good one. Anyway, however it happened, the Old Course at St. Andrews is still the Home of Golf.

  The one problem I have with the British Open, by the way, is that they don’t play the tournament there every year. Why not? Why shouldn’t it have a permanent home, the way the Masters does? I say the Home of Golf ought to be the home of the British Open.

  I first played the Old Course in 1993 in the Dunhill Cup, when me, Payne Stewart, and Freddy Couples beat the British team. I was 4–0 in my matches. That’s when I fell in love with the Old Course at St. Andrews.

  The course is set up perfect for my game. I was hitting a draw back then, and the one thing you’ve got to be sure to do at the Old Course is keep it left off the tee. On the back side, especially, anything right is trouble, because of the OB fence that runs all the way down the west side of the course. Too far left, though, and maybe you’re in another fairway, but that’s not going to hurt you too much, because there are no trees on the course, only some bushes, and even if you’re way left you have a shot at the green. There are a ton of bunkers, but back then, before they lengthened some of the par 4s, I could fly them all.

  Fortunately for me, Greg “Boats” Rita, who was on my bag at the time, had been on Curtis Strange’s bag at a couple of Dunhill Cups, and he knew the Old Course pretty well. Boats—everybody called him that because of his humongous feet—pretty much summed up what you needed to know about the Old Course in one sentence: “Keep it left going out, and keep it left coming home.”

  After the Dunhill Cup, Lee Trevino and Peter Thomson both predicted I’d win an Open at St. Andrews some year. So did Gene Sarazen. Considering how awful 1993 had been for me, that was music to my ears. And one other motivation was that Jack Nicklaus had said, “If you’ve won the British Open at St. Andrews you’ve fulfilled your golfing career.” I thought then, and I think now, that anything Jack says about golf is gospel.

  Playing there at St. Andrews, whether I was going to play good or not, win or miss the cut, I was happy—for the first time in two years—just to be out on a golf course. I was on Prozac. I wasn’t drinking. I was crazy worried about my gambling debts. I was looking over my shoulder. I was miserable.

  Except at the Old Course.

  The minute I stepped out to that first tee for a practice round, I felt right at home. I could just as well have been back in Bay Ridge. I felt like I belonged. I don’t know why, exactly, but I know I felt so good about being there that I played two practice rounds. Hell, I never play two practice rounds. A lot of times I don’t even play one. And it’s not as if I didn’t know this course and had to play practice rounds to figure it out. I just liked playing it.

  The happiest four days of my life in golf were the four days of the 1995 British Open. The PGA had been such a blur, it was so fast that I didn’t have time to think about what was happening. It was only later that the experience sunk in, and then it w
as in bits and pieces, not all at once. But the British Open was something I felt shot by shot, hole by hole, as it unfolded. It’s hard to explain, and I know it may not make a lot of sense, but I call it “emotional clarity.” It’s not that I remember every detail physically, but more like emotionally. I can’t give you shot-by-shot, but I can recall how I felt just about every minute of every day.

  The fans in Scotland are the most knowledgeable in golf. You hear that from guys who’ve played there a lot more than I have, and I’m sure it’s true. They don’t clap for bad shots or even mediocre ones; they clap for good shots. They understand angles of approach and trajectory and club choice and whether you made a good shot or just got lucky. They know you haven’t really been tested until you’ve played in their wind and rain.

  It almost makes me wish I’d been drinking then, because I’d love to have gone to a pub and spent an evening talking golf.

  If you hit a bad tee ball, British fans are not going to applaud. In the States, on the other hand, if you just get it airborne and hit it 330, American fans are going to yell their heads off; they don’t give a shit where it goes.

  American fans get a kick out of guys hitting it long, and a lot of them come to party and have a good time. I’ve had thousands of people come up to me and say, “I don’t even play the damned game, John, but I sure love you.”

  Being there in St. Andrews that week brought me out of a shell I’d crawled into since rehab. I could go out there and play that golf course every day the rest of my life. That’s how much I love it.

  The 67 I shot in the first round was the best round of competitive golf I have ever played. The wind was blowing like a sonofabitch, and it was gusty and swirling. Every tee shot was a navigational challenge, every putt a balancing act in which you had to factor in wind as well as grain and break. Lose your focus for an instant and you’re looking at a big number.

  Golf as it was meant to be.

  I followed the 67 with a 71 in the second round, and the wind was still so tough that nobody went really low, so I was tied for the lead with Brad Faxon and Katsuyoshi Tomori at 6 under after 36. Ernie Els, Corey Pavin, Mark Brooks, Ben Crenshaw, John Cook, and Costantino Rocca were bunched right behind us at five under, and several other guys were close. That’s what happens when you have a lot of wind: nobody’s going to come along and drop a 64 on the field. Saturday I shot 73—not great, but not terrible in a major—and dropped to fourth place, at 211 behind Steve Elkington (210), Rocca (209), and Michael Campbell (207).

  Sunday was the windiest day yet. Campbell dropped back. So did Elk. Ernie slipped. Rocca held steady. And so did I. Going into the Road Hole, I had a two-shot lead over Costantino. That’s where I made the key shot of the day for me, a sand shot from the Road Hole bunker that let me save bogey.

  That’s right, bogey. My second shot caught the Road Hole bunker, about the last place in the world you want when you’re sitting at the top of the leaderboard on the 71st hole of the British Open.

  You’ve probably seen the Road Hole on TV. It’s got a pot bunker with a 6- or 7-foot face, and even if you’re far enough away from the face to try to go for the pin, you only have a narrow strip of superfast green tilted like a Ping-Pong table with two legs shorter than the others.

  My playing partner, Ernie Els, was in the same damned place, and he managed to get out, so that gave me a little breath of confidence. Fortunately, in a way, my ball was too close to the face for me to even think about going for the pin, so I took my medicine: I came out nearly sideways to the fringe at the back of the green and then two-putted from 30 feet for bogey.

  If I’d tried to go for the pin, I might still be in there. At the Old Course, you have to accept that sometimes bogey at the Road Hole is a good score. You just have to have the patience and judgment—two qualities I’m not exactly famous for—to accept that.

  It was the best bogey of my life.

  The thing that had kept me in the hunt all week was not so much my driving but the fact that I had been able to two-putt from some unbelievable places all week. There are seven double greens at St. Andrews, and man, are they huge. I remember Boats stepping off the distance on number 12, a drivable par 4, in the first round. I hit a 1-iron on the green and had a 180-foot putt. It went through about four or five different breaks. Too far to the right or left and you’re off the green. I got it to about 5 feet and made the putt for birdie. I also made a bunch of 7-footers to save par. It was the greatest putting week of my life.

  At the Old Course, some of the fairways actually roll faster than the greens. The greatest thing about golf like that is that you can hit any type of shot you want—there’s no such thing as a wrong shot. It’s just whatever you feel comfortable with. I think that if people really want to learn to play the game of golf, to learn all the shots and find their feel, then they should spend some time on a Scottish links–type course.

  You can flop it on those greens, or you can putt it from off the green, or you can punch and run a 7-iron to the flag. You’ve got maybe 10 different options on most holes. What was great about the week is that I realized that, hey, maybe I do have all the shots.

  You need to have them to survive. That’s all you can do in the British Open, especially when the wind is blowing. Now, you take the wind away, guys are going to shoot 15 to 20 under par to win like Tiger’s done. If there’s no wind, it’s not really a British Open. I love the bad weather; I love the wind. I thrive on it.

  The wind’s howling and I’m punching a low 5-iron into a green from 150 yards out? Cool! When the elements are really flexing their muscles on the Old Course, par becomes a great score.

  The course just never gave up; the wind blew everyday. Every shot, every putt was a fight.

  On the golf course, I was putting away Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip muffins like they were salted peanuts. I’d have four or five for breakfast, and three or four more at the turn. They had a little place back behind the 10th tee, and Greg would go get me a bagful and I’d eat them with a Diet Coke, and go on to the back nine.

  Every night that week was the same. They have a bunch of receptions, and somebody’s always trying to get you to go to one party or another, but I skipped them all. Every day after playing I went back to my room, took a 20- or 30-minute bath, watched the golf on TV (at least on Thursday and Friday, when I finished early), and then had the same dinner: spaghetti and meatballs, Diet Coke, and chocolate ice cream for dessert. Then in bed by 9:30 and up by 6:30.

  Boring? Yeah, I guess, but I’ll take boring any day at St. Andrews.

  Everybody talks about Costantino’s flub on 18, and then his 70-foot miracle putt from the Valley of Sin to send us into a playoff, but most people forget the brilliant save he made at the Road Hole just before. He’d knocked the second shot over the damn green at 17 onto the path that runs between the green and a stone wall. They’ve got some nasty grass going up on the bank towards the wall, and he’s in that shit, but then he plays this amazing putt that bounces over the road and onto the green, and he makes par. Nine out of ten times you’re going to make five or six from there, maybe worse, because it would be easy for a chip from there to run right off the green into the bunker. I only saw it on TV reruns, but it had to be one of the shots of the week.

  So as he’s walking to the 18th tee, I’m coming off the green up ahead with a one-stroke lead. He hits a good drive and has a sand wedge into the green from a perfect angle. A birdie ties me, and he couldn’t be in a better position to make one. Only he chili-dips his sand wedge and pooches it down into the Valley of Sin, 70 feet from the pin. I’ve got a one-stroke lead, and he’s looking at two putts.

  Holy shit, I’m going to win the British Open!

  Me and my wife Paulette and Bud and Boats are standing up behind the green over by the first tee. Paulette grabs my arm and goes, “You got it! You got it!” And I go, “It ain’t over yet. You never know what could happen.” I was lying, because I’m sure as hell thinking it’s over, that I’ve
got it. There’s no way he’s going to sink this putt. And Bud’s got this big grin on his face, patting me on the back, hugging Paulette, looking all cool and calm, but I’m guessing that inside he’s about to go off like a skyrocket. Only Boats looks a little stiff, like it really ain’t over until it’s over.

  And then Costantino drains his 70-foot putt.

  Shit!

  Shit!

  And then, okay, let’s go loosen up. (Shit! A 75-foot putt to send us into a four-hole playoff? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!) But I’ve got to stop thinking about what he just did and focus on what I’ve got to do: go back out there and play the way I’ve been playing all week. (Shit!) I said forget about it. That’s history. (Shit!)

  After their rounds, a few guys—Bob Estes, Corey Pavin, Mark Brooks, Brad Faxon—had stuck around up by the 18th green to watch me finish. That was great. Their staying around to congratulate me was really, really special. They didn’t have to hang around. Most guys, me included, when they finish a tournament, major or not, are on the road as fast as they can. You don’t win, what’s the point of hanging around?

  Also, a lot of guys on the Tour had lost respect for me over the past few years for some of the shit I’d done—and I can’t say that I really blame them. Looking back, there’s a lot I had to be ashamed of.

  But there these guys were, waiting to shake my hand after I came off 18. That touched my heart. Then, when Costantino sank that putt to force the playoff, they were all going, “You can do it, Big Guy. Go out there and bring that sonofabitch home.” No American had won the British since Mark Calcavecchia in 1989, and they were pulling for me.

  The playoff was pretty much over before it even started. I made a good par on one and Costantino three-putted for bogey. On two, I made a snake from about 35 feet, over a ridge, breaking all over, that dropped for birdie. He made par. I was up two going to the Road Hole.