by John Daly
The third hazard I have to overcome—and it’s the most dangerous one of all—is my gambling.
Thirteen years ago, Hollywood Henderson warned me.
I met him at Sierra Tucson in January 1993, my first time in rehab, and after I got to know him a little bit, he told me, “John, you’re going to find something that you’re going to love to do as much as you loved to drink, and it’s going to fulfill that part of your body that says, okay, I’m doing something. And you’ve got to be very, very careful what that is.”
The people around me—my agents, my closest friends—were hoping, of course, that the “something” would be practicing golf.
No such luck.
What I found was gambling.
Gambling is the only thing that gets my juices flowing like golf does—or whiskey used to. As I told a writer for Esquire magazine about five years ago, playing slot machines for me is like being completely alone, on my own, like on a cross-country drive. All the noise in a casino? I don’t hear it. I’m in a zone, and I’m all by myself. I’ll check my watch, and maybe 10, 15 hours have gone by. It’s scary how far away I get.
It’s sort of like the way I felt when I was a teenager, and I’d be out on the golf course on a summer afternoon, when it wouldn’t get dark until late. Everybody else had gone home, but I’d be there, all by myself, in this peaceful zone. I’d be totally locked in, working on my game, not thinking about anything or anybody else.
Out there on the golf course, with everything still and the day fading away, I was the only person in the world, and I felt good.
That’s the feeling I get when I gamble.
And here’s where that feeling got me in the 18 months after I left rehab in 1993: when I got to St. Andrews to play the 1995 British Open, I owed almost $4 million to casinos.
The only way I’d been able to keep my head above water was to turn all my quarterly endorsement income over to the casinos, and then run myself ragged by playing all over the world for appearance fees and by doing too many corporate outings, all because I needed the money to feed the beast.
The British Open saved me. Not because of the size of the winner’s purse itself—it was only 125,000 pounds, which was like $200,000 back then. But after St. Andrews, when you throw in all my bonuses from my sponsors, I took a $1M+ haul away from the Old Course. All that went to the casinos. The rest of the summer and fall I spent collecting appearance fees at tournaments all over the world. By the end of 1995, when my quarterly sponsorship payments came in, I was able to pay off the casinos.
Then, in 1996, the whole cycle began again: up and down, back and forth, waiting for my quarterly checks to pay off the casinos, hustling appearance fees, running myself ragged doing corporate outings instead of spending time with my family and working on my game.
That’s the way it’s been for the last 10 years.
This worries me. A lot.
Sherrie has been very supportive on the gambling front. She tells me that the kids don’t do without—and she’s right about that. They all go to great private schools. They have everything they need. They’re covered. They’re set up just fine.
The problem is that if I don’t get a grip on this thing now, what’s going to happen as I get older and my earning power decreases?
I’ll give you a perfect example of how destructive my gambling gets at times.
Last fall, after getting beat by Tiger in a playoff at the WGC AmEx Championship in San Francisco, I made $750,000 for finishing second, and generally felt pretty good about everything except my putting. I was real disappointed that I hadn’t won, but at least I’d had a really nice payday.
But instead of going home and closing the 2005 PGA Tour season on a high note, I went straight to Vegas. My first stop was the new Wynn Las Vegas casino, where they have this $5,000 slot machine. Within an hour and a half, I was down $600,000. There went all that hard work against Tiger.
Next I went over to Bally’s. Got a $600,000 line. Won about $175,000 and took it back over to that damned $5,000 machine. It owed me big-time. But I didn’t hit shit on it. Got another $600,000 line from Wynn. Lost it in two hours on that $5,000 slot.
Back to Bally’s, where I won another $80,000, then tried dialing down to the $100 slots, looking for a little streak so I could pay down some of what I owed.
No dice: in less than five hours, I lost $1.65 million.
So much for finishing the 2005 PGA Tour season on a high note.
And here’s how my sick mind analyzed the situation: my sponsorship payments would be coming through in January, so I’d be able to pay everything off and get back to even by the beginning of the new year.
Everything’s fine.
Everything’s okay.
No problema.
Hell, yes, there’s a problema. If I don’t get control of my gambling, it’s going to flat-out ruin me.
What burns me most, looking back, is that in the 12 years I’ve been gambling heavily, if I had left after the first hour and a half every time I was in a casino, I’d be up, way up. Instead, I’m down $50 to $60 million.
The fact is, 95 percent of the time that I go to a casino, the first 90 minutes I’m there I hit the biggest jackpots more often than anybody. I’m the luckiest guy on a slot machine you’ve ever seen—in the first hour and a half.
I like slots better than blackjack because of the solitude. It’s just me, by myself, and I’m in total control. I just push the button and watch the machine. With the slots, it’s like I’m driving my bus—I’m in control, just me.
Bud and Johnny, my agents, God bless ’em, they’ve busted their butts trying to throw a rope around me when it comes to gambling, but I haven’t listened. And until I listen, the way I listened to my body with the medications and the whiskey, well…all I can say is that I’m just going to have to start listening soon, real soon.
Look, in balance, I’ve taken a lot more control of my life in the last five or six years. I’m off those damned medications. I don’t drink JD anymore. I don’t beat up on hotel rooms and cars as much.
Only gambling remains a problem.
So here’s my plan. Every time I go to the casino, I start with the $25 slots. Plus, I set a walkout loss number. And the minute I hit that loss number, I quit, leave, just walk-the-hell-out. If I make a little bit, then maybe I move up to the $100 slots or the $500s, or maybe I take it to the blackjack table. It’s their money. Why not give it a shot, try to double it? And if I make a lot, I can…
Well, that’s my plan. It’s a start. It’s a start for me. I know, I know—I’m still a long way from quitting gambling.
What would I do if I did?
Drink?
That’s not an option, at least in terms of whiskey. If I start drinking whiskey again, it’ll kill me, plain and simple. I know that.
The only real option is to get control of my gambling.
A lot of stuff has come down on my head in the last five years. My father pulled a gun on me, my mother died, my best friend since first grade walked out on me, and my wife was convicted of a felony and sent to prison.
All that in five years.
Sometimes I feel like a character in a bad soap opera that’s stuck in replay mode.
Sometimes I feel like getting in my bus and just driving away from it all.
And sometimes I feel like kicking my own fat butt for feeling sorry for myself. Everybody goes through tough times. Everybody has troubles. Everybody has personal problems, family problems, relationship problems.
A long time ago, back in what I now think of as the “dark days,” I was driving somewhere with Fuzzy Zoeller—probably looking for a bar—and I was bitching about something, how I was being screwed over by some wife or something. Suddenly he makes a left turn into this big graveyard and drives slowly into the middle of it, not saying a word. Finally, he pulls over, stops, turns off the engine, and turns to me.
“You think you have troubles, son?” Fuzz says. “Well, those folks in there are
in a helluva lot worse shape than you are.”
I know it.
I’m lucky: I was born with a special talent for hitting a little white ball and making people happy.
I’m blessed: I have four wonderful children who light up my life. I know just loving them is not enough, that I have to guide them and advise them and help them as they discover who they want to be. And I look forward to that challenge, although I suspect it will be the hardest one I’ll ever have to face.
But I’m really and truly optimistic: I think I’m going to do even better on the back nine.
There are four big reasons for my optimism.
First, I have better control of my life now than at any other time since…well, in my life. My family life is rock solid. I have a wife I love to pieces, two great little boys at home with me, and two great young girls that I’m as proud of as any parent can be.
Plus, I don’t think I have an alcohol problem anymore. As I joked one time to a reporter, I don’t drink when I’m sober. I drink beer now, but I never drink whiskey. I honestly don’t think I have a drinking problem anymore, and I don’t think I ever was an alcoholic.
Second, I have a tight, solid inner circle of dedicated people around me, working their butts off on my behalf. My agents finally have me buying into their philosophy, which is for me to do what’s best for me, and to stop being my own worst enemy. (It’s only taken 15 years.)
Third, my financial house is in better order than it’s been in a long, long while.
I have a good, solid group of first-class sponsors again, headed up by 84 Lumber, Hooters, Winn Grips, Mark Christopher Chevrolet, and, most recently, TaylorMade and Maxfli.
As of last fall, I’m the owner of Lion’s Den Golf Club in Dardanelle, which I plan to turn into a dream place. I own a piece of a bar on Beale Street in Memphis called Celebrities. I’ve got John Daly’s Discount Golf Shop in Russellville, Arkansas. (And I want to open one in Fayetteville and one in Memphis.)
Finally, John Daly Enterprises is getting off to a good start. I’m building a long-term strategic partnership on my Lion brand of apparel and other stuff.
All this means I don’t have as many financial pressures as I did back when I was drinking—or later, when I was on all those antidepressants. That in turn means that I have a more solid foundation to stand on while I work to get control of the gambling. Plus, working to build and expand my businesses will, hopefully, keep my mind so occupied I won’t be drawn to the casinos so much. That’s the key: find something solid to replace what I found 13 years ago to replace whiskey.
The fourth big reason for my optimism about what lies ahead is that I’m playing good golf again.
My last two years on the golf course have been really solid: I jumped from nowhere on the World Golf Ranking in 2003 to 43rd in 2004, and I held on to that slot in 2005.
The move started even earlier when I won the BMW in 2001, my first win anywhere since the British Open in 1995, and then followed up in 2002 with a win at a tournament that Callaway puts on in Pebble Beach every year, and then a win in Korea in 2003. None of those three counted on the official PGA Tour money list, but the checks cleared, and when you’ve been through as long a dry spell as I had, it’s nice to discover that you still know how to do it.
The most important win in my career, though, came at the Buick Invitational in 2004, when I knocked a long, tricky bunker shot to 7 inches for a tap-in birdie on the first playoff hole.
Biggest win? No, that would be the British Open in 1995.
But Buick was the most important because it breathed life back into my golf career. If you saw it on TV, you saw me bawling like a baby after I won. I was crying because this win proved to me and the world that I wasn’t some washed-up has-been who’d drowned his talent in booze.
In 2004, I was named Comeback Player of the Year on the PGA Tour.
Last year, 2005, was almost as good. I didn’t win, but I could have—twice, first against Vijay and then against Tiger—if I could have putted worth a shit. You go head-to-head in playoffs against the number one and number two players in the world, you know you belong, even if you lose.
This year, I’ve got my sights set even higher.
This year, I’m going to concentrate on becoming a grinder.
“Grinder” is a term you hear thrown around a lot in golf, but I’m not sure fans understand how we Tour guys use the term. I think fans may have the wrong idea that “grinder” means a boring golfer—a guy who makes few birdies and no eagles, does nothing splashy, takes no risks.
We define it a different way. To us, a grinder is a guy who doesn’t give up, who keeps on keeping on, who plays hard and scratches for every par even when he doesn’t have his A game. To us it’s a term of high respect. On the Tour, it’s a badge of honor to be thought of as a grinder, as a guy who never, ever quits trying.
So that’s how I’m trying to deal with my gambling problem, by becoming a grinder, by grinding away at it, by not letting a setback or a loss throw me into a tailspin. I’m going to keep on working and working and working some more, and I’m not going to give up until I get it under control.
And while I’m grinding, I’m going to be guided by the advice my mother gave me a long time ago:
Champions come from the heart.
POSTSCRIPT
A while back, I went up to Nashville to talk to some music and theatrical agents about some projects I have in mind. We shot the shit about golf for a while, and then we talked about cutting a record, and then one of the guys asked me, “John, what else do you really want to do?”
“Two things,” I told him. “Write a book and make a movie about my life.”
The guy thought for a minute, and then he said, “Wait a while, John. You’ve got too much going on in your life to write a book or make a movie right now.
That was two years ago.
You’re holding exactly the book I wanted to write.
I hope it helps you understand me better.
Now all I have to do is work hard and win another major, to give my movie a happy ending.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A ton of FRIENDS have stood by me over the years without ever asking anything in return. There’s been so many, I’m in a cold sweat right now for fear of forgetting somebody. Fortunately, they know who they are, and they all know I love them.
Top seed goes to my best friend, JAMIE DALY, who also happens to be my older brother. We’ve had us some times, Bro. You are Da Man!
Four dear people at Lion’s Den Golf Club in Dardanelle saw an essentially abandoned blond-headed teenager who could hit a golf ball a country mile and took him under their wing: DANDY DON CLINE, JUDGE VAN TAYLOR, DICK BERRYMAN, and MRS. SHIRLEY WITHERELL, who on more Sunday afternoons than I can count let me ride shotgun on her golf cart so we could squeeze in 36 holes before dark. Thanks, all of you, for helping me grow up.
Old buddies BLAKE ALLISON (Yo, Bubba!), LANCE AWE, PETER VAN DER RIET, BRIAN VAN DER RIET, STEVE HOLDEN, DAN ROLLING, and the whole DARDANELLE GANG—throw me a beer, man—put up with a lot of shit from me over the years. And they gave back plenty in return. Then there’s CHRIS LEGGIO, MARK and MARY ELLEN LEGGIO, and JAMISON BLAKE. Guys, you are my extended family, and I love you all.
New buddies—well, relatively new—JOHNNY LEE and JOHN SISINNI are the kind of guys you can call on anytime for anything for. I know. I’ve done it. And they’ve always, always delivered.
For 17 years, since before the 1991 PGA Championship, BUD MARTIN and JOHN MASCATELLO have represented me, but to identify them as “agents” doesn’t begin to suggest what they’ve done for me and what they mean to me. Along with TERRY REILLY, they’ve rescued me from one jam after another over the years more times than I can count—and certainly more times than anyone in his right mind could have expected them to.
They’ve counseled me, cheered for me, lifted my spirits, and—when I’ve needed it, which has been often—kicked me in the butt. They’ve shown me the right pat
h, told me when I took the wrong one, and helped me mature (at least some). They’ve tolerated a whole lot of intolerable behavior on my part, and paid it back with a ton of tough love.
GLEN WAGGONER has written three golf books; a ton of magazine articles for Esquire, Men’s Journal, and other magazines; and Rotisserie League Baseball, the book that introduced the fantasy sports game which he and a bunch of his cronies invented 25 years ago. (It’s even spread to golf.) He was one of the founding editors of ESPN The Magazine, and he’s currently the executive editor of ESPN Books. But his greatest challenge in sports journalism was translating my recollections, rants, and raucous ramblings into passable English. If he pulled it off—and you’ll be the judge of that—it’s probably because he hails originally from Texas. Or, as we like to call it back home, Southwestern Arkansas.
HarperCollins senior vice president and executive editor DAVID HIRSHEY took a big risk on a golfer who hasn’t read a book cover to cover since The Grapes of Wrath in high school. Maybe he’d heard that I was a 66-to-1 long shot going into the 1995 British Open. Thanks for having faith. Thanks as well to David’s editorial caddies, MILES DOYLE and NICK TRAUTWEIN, for getting all the yardages right and keeping me out of hazards. And a tip of the visor to researcher LINDA WESLEY, who did her dead-solid best to make sure I didn’t sign an incorrect scorecard.
Thanks also to my literary agent, SCOTT WAXMAN, who sang my praises in words that New York publishers could understand.
More than just my most loyal sponsor, JOE HARDY, the visionary leader of 84 Lumber, has been like a father to me. Thanks for everything, Dad. So I guess that makes MAGGIE HARDY MAGERKO a younger, smarter, wiser sister. Thanks for everything, Sis.
Two wonderful, generous people—LYNETTE and BOB HOLMES—offered me their strong shoulders to lean on after the death of my mom. Guys, I can never thank you enough for the unconditional love you have given me.
