by John Daly
“Big John, I can’t tell you I haven’t thought about ending it myself,” he told me. “But think about your kids, and think about all the fans you’d disappoint if you killed yourself.”
You know, I probably wouldn’t have done anything. I was feeling low and shit, but I’d felt low before. I was just in one of those places where I needed to hear somebody I trusted and respected tell me that I was worth something, that I mattered to people, that I had a lot to live for. I was feeling pretty damned sorry for myself, and I needed some love. Hollywood gave it to me then the way Donnie had done five years before.
As I told Bob Verdi in Golf Digest a year ago, Betty Ford turned out not to be so much about the drinking as it was about learning to look in the mirror and finding something I liked.
For 30 days, I was in an outpatient program at Betty Ford. You go in Monday through Friday from six in the morning to nine or ten at night. You’re there a lot of hours, but you’re on your own. I had a condo in Palm Springs, so it was perfect.
Except for one thing: I went to Betty Ford blaming myself for Paulette divorcing me, and trying to figure out what I could do to get her back. But in the time I was there, I realized that when you wrote down the pros and cons of the relationship, there was a lot more negatives than positives.
I came out of Betty Ford as a stronger human being for realizing that.
There were group discussion sessions, with 10 or 12 people, men and women, all of us trying to define things for ourselves. You learned about everybody else’s problems. And you learned that some of your problems were a little bigger than somebody else’s, and some weren’t.
But I really didn’t pay attention to other people’s problems, except when they were crying or something, and you wanted to give them a hug.
There was one girl in there that had been abused by her husband. So I’m going to myself, “I ain’t done that one. I have never done that one.” And there was another one in there whose husband was cheating on her big-time.
The best thing to come out of my time in Betty Ford was that I met Mr. Ely Callaway of Callaway Golf.
My two main sponsors, Wilson and Reebok, had dropped me while I was in rehab. The Wilson deal paid me several million a year plus bonuses, and there was five more years to go in the original contract. And I’d just done another five-year deal with Reebok.
The day they dropped me was April 28, 1997—my 31st birthday. Happy fucking birthday to you guys, too.
Mr. Callaway called me during my third week at Betty Ford. He wanted to come see me. He came out to my place in Palm Springs, and I cooked him dinner: chicken, mashed potatoes, a salad, store-bought rolls.
Anyway, Mr. Callaway said, “John, we want to sign you. Can you get your shit straight?”
I said to him, “Dad”—I called him Dad right off the bat—“I can’t sit here and tell you that I’m never going to drink again. But with Wilson and Reebok dropping me, I’m not getting any quarterly endorsement payments anymore. I’ve got no money. My golf game sucks. I owe two or three million dollars to the casinos. My wife’s divorcing me, which means I’ll probably be looking at some more alimony. I’m generally screwed six ways to Sunday. So hell, yes—I’d love to sign with you.”
Well, after I got out of Betty Ford, I went to see Mr. Callaway at his company’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California. I met all the staff there. Great, great people. I love them to death. My agents worked out a good deal with them. The terms were great: Callaway paid off my gambling debt, which was $1.7 million, and they paid me a base salary of $1.2 million, with a bonus package based on how I played. I would switch to their clubs, of course, which was fine by me, because I always liked the Big Bertha.
But there were two conditions: no drinking and no gambling.
Mr. Callaway was a great man. A great man. If it had still been his private company, if it wasn’t publicly traded, I think I might still be with them today. There was a lot of alcoholism in his family. He and I talked a lot about it. I think he understood what I was struggling with.
That first time I came out of rehab, out of Sierra Tucson, I had said, “I’ll never drink again.” Those are heavy words. They felt right at the time. But what they do is they set you up for failure if you fuck up. And people fuck up. I know.
This time, when I left Betty Ford, I said, “There’s no way I’m going to tell anybody that I’m never going to drink again.” That’s because you still want to take it day to day, the way the program teaches you. But my whole life right then was trying to get Paulette back, get new sponsors, and get back on the Tour.
The conditions of my new Callaway contract were absolutely clear about two things: no gambling and no drinking. Fine. My responsibility. I accept it. I know the consequences. But there were all sorts of other things that, over time, wore me down.
First and worst were the medications that I was put on. I hated the way Prozac made me feel—made me not feel, really— when I was on it before. And here I go again.
My doctor at the time, I’m sure he was good and meant well, but he had me on everything at one time or other. Switching me up every other month. Prozac. Paxil. Lithium. Other stuff I can’t remember. And whatever he said, Mr. Callaway supported.
But doing all those medications, I got to where I thought I was losing my mind. At the 1998 Greater Vancouver Open, I got the shakes so bad I thought I was going to die. It was a warm, sunny day, and I had on two jackets, and I was shaking so bad I could barely hold a club in my hands. Corey Pavin and David Frost, who I was paired with, were great. They were more worried about me than they were about how they were playing. It was a frightening, frightening day.
Your mind can get to a point, I believe, where it’s going every which way, you’re thinking about too many things all at once to focus on one. You’ve got so many thoughts, positive and negative, whirling around inside your head that your body just shuts down. It’s like it’s telling you, “Hey, cut this shit out. Just stop thinking.”
(Three years ago, at the 84 Lumber Classic, I had another attack like that. This time it wasn’t antidepressants. This time it was stress and anxiety, nerves and tension, brought on by all the legal troubles my wife and her family were caught up in at the time. And I didn’t drink enough water on the golf course; I think dehydration is what it was more than anything.)
I came out strong in 1998: two fourths and three other top 20s in my first seven tournaments. Through the Masters, I had made $368,000 in 10 tournaments. But then everything turned to shit again: in the next 15 events, I made $26,000.
Unfortunately, 1999 picked up where 1998 left off. I had no top 10s and only three top 25s the whole year. I ended up 158th on the money list, with $186,000.
If it hadn’t been for my Callaway deal, I’d probably have had to declare bankruptcy. And the Callaway deal was just about to go away.
The medications I was on were making me feel terrible. I had diarrhea all the time. I had headaches all the time. I was bloated all the time. I was jumpy and wired, then sluggish and lazy. I didn’t want to have sex. I’d call them and say, “This ain’t the right one.” And they’d put me on another one. Just as bad. I was feeling like shit all the time.
Then there was the whole “Team Daly” thing. I didn’t know they called themselves that until later, but they were this group of people—a nutritionist, an exercise therapist, a psychologist, a counselor for this, a counselor for that, I don’t even know how many altogether—who kept calling me all the time and having me come in for a conference and telling me what to do. There was no ignoring them either; if they didn’t get a callback, they’d just keep hounding my ass. I guess they figured that I was off on a bender or something. They meant well, and they were smart and decent people, but they were pushing me and poking me all the time to the point I felt like some kind of caged animal, being made to do tricks.
Finally, my doctor put me on lithium. That was the worst. Two days later, I was back in Palm Springs, playing some golf for fun at Ind
ian Wells. I’m throwing up like every five minutes. I’m sick as a dog.
And I called them and I go, “There’s no way y’all are going to keep me on this shit.”
And they go, “Well, just try it. Be patient. You’ve got to stay on it.”
Well, I finally looked in the mirror one day late that summer and said, “Fuck the money. I’m killing myself taking this shit.” I really was. I was trying to stay on medication for the wrong reasons. For money. To keep a contract, so I could make a living.
But I knew I wasn’t going to make a lot of money in the future if I kept going the way I was going. I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t gambling. I wasn’t playing golf worth a shit. I had split up with my wife. I didn’t have anybody in my life I cared about except my kids and my parents, and I couldn’t stand to have them see me the way I was.
The medications were destroying me. My cheeks were fat and bloated and splotchy. I didn’t know where my moods were going to swing next. None of my clothes fit. I couldn’t stand the way I felt and looked. And my golf game had turned to shit. I was a fat freak who could hit a golf ball a mile. That was it.
And I hated myself.
They say that antidepressants are supposed to level out your emotions. Well, I wasn’t a depressed person until I started taking that shit.
Look, with antidepressants I’d sometimes get headaches and diarrhea, and lose my sex drive, and all kinds of shit like that. But the worst thing is they sometimes made me more depressed. That’s right. They made me more depressed than I was. I’d just kind of like be “out there.” I’d be kind of floating around like I was half dead.
That’s no way to live. A person’s got to be able to get fired up for something. Me, I’ve got to have adrenaline flowing when I play golf. I can’t live my life like a zombie.
I had been watching my whole life just vanish. No emotions. No adrenaline. When I step on the first tee of a tournament, my butterflies need to be flapping their wings. But on this medication, I couldn’t wait until the round was over.
Athletes can’t live that way.
The next toughest thing, besides living with the medication, was the rumors that would flow around about where I was and what I was doing. Somebody from Callaway once heard that I was in Vegas for two or three days and that I’d lost $2 or $3 million. I’d been home practicing, getting ready for a golf tournament.
Rumors flared up about me drinking, too. I’d be overseas, and somebody would say that I was at a bar in Alabama or something. The Callaway guys were calling me every other week to check up on me. I was trying to play golf, and they were always pestering me about some new rumor they’d heard.
Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I looked in that mirror and I said to myself, “I’m going to get my life back. I’m getting off this shit. I’m going to drink if I feel like it. I’m going to gamble if I feel like it. And I’m going to start playing golf. I’ve tried everybody else’s way. Now I’m going to try my way.”
And so I drove to Vegas one day in early September and I gambled a little, and I drank a little, and just as I figured, somebody called the Callaway people and told them. That was okay: I was going to tell them myself as soon as I was done having a little fun.
The way I analyzed it, the years 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1995 weren’t bad years in terms of golf. I won four tournaments, two of them majors. I had a chance to win a few others. I made a lot of money. And I drank when I wanted to, and I gambled when I wanted to. Yeah, I owed a lot of money to casinos, but I was making a lot of money, and not once during those years (or later) did I ever fail to pay my gambling debts.
That’s just the way I am. That’s the way I live. That’s the way I was going to be from now on.
I had stopped being me.
I was going to be me again.
Somebody doesn’t like that?
Go fuck yourself.
After I got back from Vegas, I drove down to the Callaway offices in Carlsbad to have it out with them. Everybody’s there. My agents, Bud and John. Donnie. The Callaway people. Donnie said to me, “You need to stay on the medications. You need to stay here with Callaway.”
I looked at every one of them, and I said, “I love you guys. But I’d rather kill myself drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels a day, and be happy about it, than sit here and take these antidepressant sonofabitches where I feel like I’m dead anyway. Y’all can drop me or whatever. But that’s it.”
So the Callaway people—“Team Daly”—said they wanted me to go to a rehab center they thought would help. And because they were trying to do the right thing by me, and because I also knew that no way, no how, was I going back on those fucking antidepressants, I said okay, I’ll go, I’ll try it.
The clinic was in Palm Springs. Leslie, the girl I was dating at the time, went with me. She went to the women’s side, and I went to the men’s side. We stayed there exactly one night. I saw a bag of cocaine come over the fence. They wouldn’t let me have any Diet Coke, but they’re letting cocaine come over the fence? One guy tells me, “Man, we can get anything we want here. What do you like to do?”
Leslie and I left the next morning.
As we were driving away, I called Mr. Callaway to tell him my decision.
“Turn around, John,” he said. “Go back.”
I told him, “Mr. C., I just can’t do that. I love you, and I love your company, but it’s over.”
He said again, “Go back, John. Turn around and go back.”
I kept on driving.
At a time when other people were deserting me right and left—Wilson, Reebok, Paulette—Mr. Callaway had extended a helping hand. He saved me from financial ruin. He showed faith in me. And he did everything in his power to help me.
I loved Mr. Callaway. But I just had to do it my way. It wasn’t against him or his people or anything. I just couldn’t go down a path that I knew would eventually destroy me.
I know the “Team Daly” people at Callaway were trying to help. I know they thought they were doing the right things for me. And I love them for it. But I couldn’t take what they were doing to me anymore.
I was not a depressed person. I was not a depressed person. I was being treated with powerful antidepressants, which may have been great for a depressed person, but I was not a depressed person. Not then, not now.
I also don’t believe I was ever an alcoholic. I never wanted to believe that I was an alcoholic, and now I don’t believe that I’m an alcoholic. What I believe, after going through Betty Ford, and thinking about it for a lot of years, is that yeah, sure, I’ve drunk too much too many times. But is that the same thing as being an alcoholic? I don’t think so.
I can tell you this: I’ve destroyed more shit sober than I have drunk. Out of pure, blind anger. Shit builds up inside me, and I lose my mind. I go nuts.
My anger is worse than alcohol any day.
SEVEN
“ALL MY EXES WEAR ROLEXES”
That’s the title of a song on the CD I cut, My Life, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The music is borrowed from the great George Strait (“All My Exes Live in Texas”) and the lyrics were whipped up by my old pal Johnny Lee. Go to johndaly.com and get yourself a copy. The money goes to a great cause, and I can tell you for sure that “All My Exes Wear Rolexes” fits my marital history to a tee.
I love women, I really do. I guess it shows, what with me being married now four times. But I got to tell you, it ain’t been easy. I pay a few hundred grand a year in alimony and child support. I’ve had three divorces: one peaceful but long, one long and nasty, one short and brutal. Still, while I’m not exactly an oil painting, women do seem to like me okay. And one of my main sponsors is Hooters, so how bad could I be?
But it ain’t been easy, brother.
It ain’t been easy.
Dale
I met Dale in the summer of 1987 at the bar of the Holiday Inn in Blytheville, Arkansas, up near the Missouri border. I was 21, and I’d just w
on the Arkansas Men’s Stroke Play, a tournament run by the Arkansas State Golf Association, and I wanted to celebrate.
My old friend and sometimes coach Rick Ross had been with me most of that summer, carrying my bag some and helping me figure things out. It wasn’t actually your usual coach-student deal, not then and not later. A “lesson” with Rick would be him talking to me for five minutes or so, then me going to work it out. I’d already decided to turn pro at the Missouri Open in August, and I knew I had a lot of work to do. Rick’s the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a regular coach, and I owe him a lot—not the least of which was that I pretty much tore Arkansas up that summer, winning five ASGA events and locking up Arkansas Player of the Year for the second straight year. I also won the Missouri Open in my debut as a pro.
(Thanks, Rick. I owe you a lot, brother.)
But back to Dale. I’d gone to the Holiday Inn bar because it was the only place in town I could find that was open. We started talking. She was a hand model living in Memphis, and she was home visiting her parents. We had a few drinks, we danced a little, and the next thing you know, we’re a couple.
Funny thing, she was three or four years older than me, but our birthdays were on the same day: April 28. I’ve always believed shit like that means something.
Me and Dale started hanging out together, and she traveled some with me to ASGA tour events, and pretty soon we were living together in an apartment in Little Rock. By now we’re in love, so we decided to get married. It was a big-ass wedding, because I knew that’s what she wanted. And we moved to Blytheville to a house her grandparents give us. I didn’t much like the idea of people giving me anything, especially not a house, but I was trying to make her happy, she wanted to be close to her family, so Blytheville it was.
I’d just turned pro, and I’d done real good at first. But I’d missed the cut in the final stage of the 1987 Q-School, so instead of spending 1988 playing on the PGA Tour and winning a lot of money and seeing the country in style, it was going to be scrimping around the minitour circuit, playing before nobody, and trying to figure out how to get gas money to drive to the next stop. That being the case, I guess it didn’t really matter all that much where we lived, because I was going to be on the road most of the time anyway.
