by John Daly
Here’s where Nicklaus, sitting up in the telecast booth said, “Oh, gosh. Oh, no. Don’t hit driver.”
Sorry, Jack. As the saying goes, I was going home with what brung me. I had got a two-shot lead. The wind was howling out of the right at about 30 or 40 miles an hour. To the right beyond the tee box on 17 there’s a wall, about 15 feet high, with a sign that says ST. ANDREWS OLD COURSE HOTEL. They built it to replace an old train shed that used to sit there. You’ve got to start your tee shot over the sign because if you start it left, you’ll go into this long, thick rough that’s tougher than 10-years-to-life. And if you are able to get a club on the ball and try to go for the green from that angle, you’re a lead-pipe cinch to end up in the Road Hole.
Boatsie wanted me to hit 3-iron. And I said, “Remember yesterday? We hit one-iron and made six.” (He had the good sense not to remind me that almost an hour earlier I’d hit driver and gone way too far left, which led to the bogey that made this whole playoff thing necessary. As if I could forget.)
At the Road Hole, you’ve got to get it far enough right to stay out of the gunch and you’ve got to hit it long enough to make sure you don’t have to hold the green with anything more then an 8-iron. So I said, “Fuck it, man. I’m hitting driver. I’m hitting right over the L.” That is, I was going to draw it over the L in HOTEL and let the wind push it out into the fairway.
Risky? You bet. Get double-crossed and it goes right and OB. Draw it too much and the wind would put me into the left rough again, and from there the final resting place of your next shot is almost certainly the most famous bunker in golf. Been there, done that already that day.
I hit it perfect, 330 yards, right to the neck of the fairway, an open alley to the green with the Road Hole bunker all but out of play. That left me with 139 to the hole. A little into the short rough, but a clean lie. I drew a little knockdown 9-iron to the right side of the green that kicked a little left and checked up at about 12 feet. I knew I had won the tournament, even before I two-putted for par, because Rocca was in the bunker. He ended up making seven, so I went into the 18th with a five-stroke lead.
At 18, I hit 2-iron. This wasn’t the time to be a show-off and try to drive the green, which would have been a piece of cake with the wind behind me. So I hit 2-iron, walked over the famous bridge there, and stopped and waved at the fans, who were cheering their heads off. Then I gave them a windmill arm wave and they lost it completely.
At the British Open, if you’re in the last group and leading the tournament coming up to the 18th green, the marshals drop the ropes and let the gallery march in behind you. It’s a great, great feeling. Halfway up the fairway, I was semisurrounded by cheering, happy people. It’s like I had my own personal escort.
Minutes later, after I putted out for my par and shook Costantino’s hand, and when me and my posse were done hugging and kissing and jumping around like idiots, Bud got a call from Wilson and Reebok, my two biggest sponsors at the time. They wanted me to get back down to Swilcan Bridge as soon as I could. They had photographers all lined up and ready to go, and they wanted to get pictures of me on the bridge with the Royal & Ancient clubhouse in the background. But they wanted me, like, right now, because the light was only going to be good for a little while longer.
Swilcan Bridge is the bridge that crosses the creek—sorry, Swilcan Burn—that runs across the 1st and 18th fairways. It’s like 500 years old or something, and is one of the most famous spots in golf. On Friday, Arnold Palmer, who was making his last appearance in a British Open, stopped on that bridge to wave one last goodbye. Just last summer, Jack Nicklaus did the same thing.
But before I could go down for the photo shoot, me and Costantino had to submit our scorecards, and then there was the presentation of the Claret Jug on the 18th green, and I had to say something without bawling like a baby. So by the time we finished everything, the sun was dropping, and the Wilson and Reebok people were going nuts.
So Bud and I hustled over to a golf cart and started out for Swilcan Bridge, when all of a sudden somebody came running out of the media room yelling “Stop! You got to come back! You got to come back! The President’s on the phone! He wants to talk to you!”
My first thought is, holy shit, the President of the United States wants to talk to me. But then Bud pointed out that Wilson and Reebok were putting about $4 million a year in my pocket, and all Clinton was doing was taking 40 percent of that away, and that the sun was just about to sink behind the Old Course Hotel. It was now or never for the commemorative photo. So, talk to Clinton or pose for the photo? It didn’t take me long to figure out what to do: “Hit it, Bud.”
We get the photo shoot done with about a minute to spare.
Later that night, when we got back to our rooms in the Old Course Hotel, there were a bunch of new messages, including one that said: “Please call the President of the United States.”
Fine, I said. I get the picture, and I will. But I still haven’t had dinner yet, and I’m starving. Besides, I didn’t even vote for the guy. But now Bud’s going the other way: “He’s the president, John. You’ve got to talk to him. Please! Do it now.”
So I’m like, okay, okay, get him on the horn, only that turned out to take a lot of back-and-forth, one guy talking to another guy who told me to hold on, all this even though he’d been the one to call me in the first place. But finally a guy came on and said, “John, this is President Clinton.”
Sure it was—I recognized the voice right off. You can take the boy out of Arkansas, but you can’t take the Arkansas out of the boy. And so I said, “Thanks for calling. Sorry it took me a while to get back to you.” And then we went back and forth a little: how do you feel, were you blown away when Rocca made that putt, you made us all proud, blah-blah-blah. And about then I recalled something: “Say, do you remember that time we played golf after I won the PGA and you were still governor? Well, you told me you’d look into a speeding ticket I got that time outside of Fort Smith the month before, only you didn’t, and it’s costing me two grand a year on my insurance.”
So he laughed this big laugh, and said he’s sorry, but he can’t do anything about it now because he’s not governor anymore. And then he congratulated me again, and we shot the shit some more, and I thanked him, and we said goodbye.
It was pretty nice, if you think about it. After all, here’s the President of the United States, a fellow Arkansas boy, calling to say he’s proud of me for winning a damned golf tournament.
(Pretty nice, but I didn’t vote for him the second time around either.)
That night, as you can probably imagine, I celebrated pretty hard. But not with Jack Daniels. And not with Miller Lite.
I celebrated with chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce, served up in the Claret Jug.
It was the best food I had ever eaten in my life.
SIX
THE HARDER YOU FALL
I started drinking again in August 1996 in Sweden.
At the British Open that year, I played like a defending champion the first three rounds—70-73-69—then threw up all over my shirt in the final round: 77. What the hell, I still had some nice appearance-fee checks to cash at tournaments in Europe, which is why I found myself in Sweden yielding to temptation.
Since I came out of rehab, my agents always told the hotel staff wherever we were traveling to make sure all the alcohol was removed from the minibar in my suite before we arrived. Out of sight, out of mind—I was cool with that. This time, the hotel staff forgot to do it, because I discovered when I went to get a Diet Coke that the damned thing was fully stocked with beer and booze.
That night, I drank five beers. I can’t even remember what kind. I was by myself, and I got hammered, because European beer is a lot stronger than American beer.
And because I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol for four years.
Back up a little. It took a while to get from winning the British Open in 1995, to falling off the wagon in 1996, to drinking myself senseless at t
he Players Championship, losing my Wilson and Reebok sponsorships, and spending 30 days in the Betty Ford Center, all in the space of six weeks in 1997.
So let’s rewind the tape…
The first major thing me and my crew did after I won at St. Andrews was shave our heads. The Monday before the tournament began, I’d bet Bud, Blake, Donnie, and Mike Boylan of Wilson, who’d become a good friend, that if I won the thing, we were all going to shave our heads. They said, sure, fine, whatever you say, John. Much as they believed in me, though, I don’t think any of them thought they were going to have to be going to a barbershop anytime soon.
Hey, I was as serious about that as I was about the new Mercedes I told a car dealer friend back in Memphis to have in his showcase and ready to roll for me if I won.
Sure enough, the next day after the British, by the time Blake had to get to the airport to return home, me and him were bald as billiards. But nobody had to go to a barbershop: I shaved Blake, and Blake shaved me. Mike and Donnie, they chickened out. And Bud, he must have thought he dodged the bullet, because we raced off to Holland for a tournament before I could do him, and we both spent the week running full-speed, me playing golf and basking in the glory of being British Open champion, and Bud shaking and baking, talking deals with what seemed like everybody in the world of golf.
By now, Bud probably figured I’d forgotten about the bet.
No way. On Sunday night, at 2:30 A.M., about eight hours before we were scheduled to leave for Sweden and another tournament, I knocked on Bud’s door—with scissors, a can of shaving cream, and a razor on a tray. Room service!
I returned to the States in August to play the PGA, but I needn’t have bothered: 76-73—cut. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of my regular season: 30th, T-67th, cut, T-67th, WD.
I can’t say that I particularly gave a shit. I was the 1995 British Open champion. Anything else that came my way that year was pure gravy. And there was a lot of that.
Any notion I might have had coming out of the gate at the top of my game in 1996 now that I had my second major got knocked in a cocked hat by mid-May: five missed cuts in my first 10 tournaments. The summer wasn’t much better than the spring. I did make seven straight cuts and had the best U.S. Open of my career (T-27), but I had only one top 10 finish (T-10 at the Kemper).
That’s what I had to look back on when I sat down in front of that loaded minibar in Sweden.
On Friday night, after the second round of the tournament, I called one of my agents, who was in Sweden with me at the time and asked him to come up to my suite to have dinner.
“You’re playing great, John,” he said as he walked in the door. “This could be what turns you around. You could win this thing.”
“Thanks, man, I think so, too,” I said. “But sit down. There’s something I want to tell you.”
Then I went over to the fridge, pulled out a beer, and popped it open.
“No! No! No!” was all he could say.
And then I told him.
“Johnny, I had five when we got here on Tuesday. I didn’t have any Wednesday night because I had an early tee time yesterday. Thursday night, here by myself, I drank six or seven.”
He looked like he was in shock. He didn’t ream me out or get mad or anything, but I know my drinking again—even if it was only beer—really, really hurt him.
I finished T-18 in the tournament. I played really good. If I’d made a few more putts, I could have won the thing. It was my best finish of the year.
But what I was proudest of that week was that I told John the truth. I didn’t hide what I’d done. I could have gone on like that, sneak-drinking by myself, for I don’t know how long. I could have become a closet drunk. And then I probably would have become an alcoholic.
My philosophy then, and my philosophy now, is that “it is what it is.” You do what you do, and you accept responsibility for it. Anything else, and you’re just fooling yourself. Anything else, and you’re not a man.
Back home, starting with the PGA, I picked up where I’d left off: I missed the cut in my first four tournaments. After a month like that, it was pretty clear that my decent finish in Sweden hadn’t meant a damned thing.
But the beers I drank there, they did.
Rumors started flying all over the place about me being seen drinking in public, which I had been, so in October my agents put out a statement over my name:
It is true that I have had a few beers on several occasions this summer, but I have not been involved in any alcohol-related incidents. I have not been drinking to excess, and this has not been the reason the level of my play lately has been below my usual standards. In fact, I have put more time and effort into my golf game than I have at any time in the past.
Back home in Dardanelle, my buddies were like, thank God, we got our John back. They meant that in a positive, supportive way. They wanted me to be me. Their main concern was “What are you drinking? Are you drinking whiskey?”
I told them, “No way, man. I’ll never drink that shit again.”
Even then, I knew that “never” is a word I should probably never use. The truth is, since coming out of rehab that first time in 1993, I’ve had maybe 40 or 50 mixed drinks with whiskey, and I never drank all of them. I don’t like the taste or even the smell of it now. I’m not going to say I’ll never drink it again, but I’ll tell you this: as of right now, this minute, I do not like the stuff.
The following year, 1997, started off sweet: four of my five rounds at the Hope were in the 60s and I finished seventh. Then everything went sour: two missed cuts and three middle-of-the-pack finishes in my next five tournaments. Then came the shit storm at the Players Championship.
For almost two years, me and my wife Paulette had been splitting up and getting back together, splitting up and getting back together. The only constant in our relationship was the fighting. I was miserable and pissed off all the time. Was I drinking? Hell, yes. That was the only way I could stay sane.
When we went to Ponte Vedra Beach for the Players, everything came to a head. She wouldn’t come out on the course with me. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And at bedtime, none of that either. Then I went out and shot a fucking 76 in the first round. And it wasn’t even one of those “if I’d made a putt here, a putt there” 76s. It was a pig-ugly 76, and I was pissed.
So I grab Donnie and I go out drinking. Remember those “40 or 50 drinks of whiskey since my first rehab” I mentioned? Well, I drank a big bunch of 7&7s that Thursday night, so maybe the 40 or 50 number is a little light.
After a while, Donnie couldn’t stand watching it anymore, so he left me with a bunch of caddies and told them to bring me home. We ended up at a joint called Sloppy Joe’s. All told, I had been drinking for a good 12 hours. I was absolutely trashed, as drunk as I’d ever been in my life and still be standing. That night was the first time I got up on a stage and sang “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
Finally, at about three o’clock in the morning, the guys got me back to the hotel, and as I was coming in the front door of our suite, I stumbled and crashed against this door leading into the kitchen. Smashed the hell out of it, fell down, and blacked out.
Next thing I know, I’m sprawled out on the floor, and Olin Browne, one of my good friends on the Tour, is trying to help me get up. There are five or six security guards standing around, but there wasn’t anything for me to do besides watching Ollie try to haul my drunk ass off the floor. And Paulette’s yelling, “Oh, my God! He destroyed the room!” And Ollie’s looking at her, saying, “Hey, it’s just a door.”
Right, it was just a door. I’ve destroyed rooms before. I know what they look like after I’m done with them. This was no big fucking deal.
With Ollie’s help, I managed to get up, get myself into the bedroom, and fall into bed, where I blacked out again, this time with my eyes open. (I’d done that before. I guess it must look pretty scary.)
By then somebody called an ambulance, wh
ich I didn’t think I needed: I had a blackout, that’s all. But the EMTs came and strapped me to a gurney and started wheeling me out. Ollie was still there, and a couple of cops now, and the security guards, and Donnie.
Then Fuzzy Zoeller came up as they were wheeling me down the hall towards the elevator. He leaned down and said, “Are you alright, kid? Are you gonna be okay?”
And I said, “No, Fuzz, I’m not. I’m fixing to lose my wife, and I ain’t playing worth a shit, and I’m drunk all the time, and I wish somebody would just kill me. Why don’t you grab that cop’s gun and just fucking kill me. I can’t live like this anymore.”
At least that’s what Fuzzy later told me I said. By then I was sort of going in and out, and I don’t remember so good.
The first faces I saw when I woke up in the damned hospital belonged to my agents, Bud and John, and to Donnie. Paulette had gone back to Memphis, Donnie said. She hadn’t even come to the hospital to see how I was. She went straight home to file for a divorce.
I told the guys I was miserable and that I had to go somewhere and see if I really needed help.
So I went to the Betty Ford Center. I made the decision to go there on my own. This time, going into rehab really was voluntary. I went there because I wanted to, not to please the PGA Tour or anybody else. I did it for myself, to answer some questions about myself.
I almost didn’t get there. I was on the highway, heading towards Palm Springs, and I started thinking, “Why bother?” My life had turned to shit. Almost a year of fighting with Paulette, and now she was leaving me. Wilson had dropped me. Reebok had dropped me. My golf game sucked. I was miserable.
Why not just drive off a cliff somewhere and be done with it?
The last time I felt this bad, back in 1992 after I destroyed my house in Colorado, I called Donnie Crabtree from my car and he talked me off the ledge. This time I called Hollywood Henderson, because of all the people I knew, he’d come closest to the place I was at right then. Thank God I got through to him.