What is the appeal of golf? Ultimately it’s about the people you golf with. You spend a lot of time waiting and hanging out, so the hanging-out skills of your foursome are just as important as the golfing skills. Tiger Woods is a popular golfer to watch, but John Daly might win out as a top pick for someone to golf with.
Daly likes beer. He smokes a lot. He doesn’t spend a lot of time getting in the zone for his shots. He probably wouldn’t care if he was playing with bad golfers, as long as they didn’t take a lot of practice swings. And if he happens to be playing well, he’s really good.
On the other hand, when he’s really drunk, he can be frightening, and if he’s not drinking, he is likely losing millions of dollars in a casino, then drinking. And smoking. And eating a lot. It’s at these times that the world looks on with a combination of incredulity and curiosity. Who is this guy?
“My Life In & Out of the Rough” is a good backgrounder on what makes Daly so unique in the world of golf. Since I don’t follow professional golf, I only knew Daly from the few times I had seen him on TV, doing a double-take at this heavy guy with a blond mullet, sponsored not by a shoe company but by Hooters, and smoking, yes, smoking while he’s hitting the ball. Not carefully lining up his shot, not warming up, just rolling in with his smoke, hitting the ball, and continuing on, as if the game was just a way to pay for the beer.
Golf, to Daly, is not just a way to pay the bills, however. He plays golf the way he wants to, yet he has the utmost respect for the sport. He tells the stories from his youth about how he originally got into golf, and why he plays. And the charm that he exudes on the golf course comes through clearly here, his candidness, his acceptance of himself, and his philosophy of “it is what it is” are endearing and oh so tempting. The envy that one might have for Daly comes from this complete “I did it my way” approach to life and golf. “The only rules I follow are the rules of golf,” he claims in the liner notes. But the rules he breaks, he apparently has no control over.
Daly’s “is what it is” attitude is tempting but not functional, because, ultimately, he knows that he can’t really accept himself as he is if he expects to survive, both physically and financially. It’s no secret that Daly drinks a lot, and its no secret that he gambles a lot. In these pages, you come to understand just how much. Here is a story about an incredibly lovable guy with a big heart, who is happy to spill it all for his voyeuristic readers and fans, but who is far from spilling it all to himself. The conclusions he reaches about himself are, yes, so tempting. As distant fans, we can admire the way he accepts and even embraces his addictions - in fact, calling them addictions ruins all the fun. But it is clear that even he knows that “The Lion” still needs help.
The book is a quick read, 3 or 4 hours tops. The speed reading comes partially from the entertaining and straightforward writing, but also from the the 16 pages of color photos, and the more sparse chapters that are Q&A (questions you would ask if you could) and “numbers” (for example, number of cigarettes smoked in one year, number of gallons of diet coke drank, total money lost to gambling… oh lord please that number can’t be right… etc.)
The book is co-written with Glen Waggoner (a co-writer is no surprise, as Daly complains that spending time in school learning to read more than the sports pages is a waste of time), but overall the book sounds like it came straight out of Daly.
It’s entertaining throughout, inspiring in parts, and heartwrenching overall. It’s hard to come away from this book not liking the guy. That’s part of the point of writing your own book, you get to tell everything from your point of view, but there’s something about Daly that makes me want to root for him.
Go get ‘em.
John Daly - My Life In & Out of the Rough - “The truth behind all the bull**** you think you know about me”
Harper Collins - Hardcover hit the shelves on 05/08/2006 just in time for… what? Father’s Day!! Yes, it would make a good Father’s Day gift.
