A Cart for America's Drunkest Golfer

I'm not a huge golf fan. I think the use of land for golf courses in some places (ie, Los Angeles) is pretty ridiculous, and it drives me bananas to see it on TV, with the whispering announcers and tracking shots of a tiny white ball someplace against a herky-jerky sky. Still, I have to admit that it does have some fascinating personalities floating around.

For the last three decades one of them has been John Daly, who was just approved to ride a cart for the PGA Championship, drawing a rebuke from Tiger Woods, who recalled that he walked the course (and won that tournament) on a broken leg.

Daly has a variety of ailments that make walking difficult, and I don't begrudge him the cart (though, again, I don't know much about this sport and its traditions, so I probably should not have an opinion at all).

Daly is a character: probably the only pro golfer to be arrested for public drunkenness in the parking lot of a Hooter's restaurant, he claims to have lost over $50,000,000 gambling (including over a million dollars in one slot machine). He has also recorded two albums. I have not heard them.

More than anything, he reminds me of Denny McClain, the Tigers pitching ace who actually looked like Daly and had some similar issues, right down to cutting a poorly-received album. (I actually wrote about him here 12 years ago, in the first month of the blog!).

Sports really is just a series of human-interest stories, and that's not such a bad thing.