Daly Wins Life’s Battles Day By Day He’s Off The Booze, But Diet Pop, Chocolate Help Him Keep Buzz On

On the far end of the table were two unopened bottles of Highland Spring water, one sparkling, one without the fizz. They were there just in case John Daly, sitting a long reach away, wanted to quench his thirst Monday during the British Open champion’s traditional Monday morning news conference at the Old Course Hotel.

Daly isn’t drinking much of anything these days aside from Diet Coke by the case, which he uses to wash down the M&Ms or anything else with the sweet chocolate taste he now craves as much as he did beer and booze before he checked into alcohol rehabilitation almost three years ago. Sunday night he said he celebrated winning the 124th Open championship with “two strip steaks and a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream” after devouring Italian Costantino Rocca in a four-hole playoff on the windy Old Course at St. Andrews.

The night after was far different at his first major victory, that stunning triumph as an unknown ninth alternate in the field at the 1991 PGA Championship at Crooked Stick near Indianapolis.

About the only thing Daly remembers about that summer evening was packing a half-dozen people into a newly hired chauffeured limousine and ordering “drive-through from the sunroof at McDonalds” for everyone, then washing it down later “with a few beers.”

He never said how many “a few” constituted, but he didn’t have to. Sober, he says, for almost three years, Daly is not at all reluctant to talk about the bad old days, when the beer never stopped flowing, when he drove at breakneck speeds “sometimes 130-140 miles an hour, but not through towns,” he said. “I wasn’t that crazy.”

Daly still has his demons, and lately he’s had migraine headaches, a problem his doctors say is a result of too much caffeine. His consumption of sweets as a substitute for alcohol also is a concern. He’s a chain smoker who said Monday morning he still craves a beer almost every day. He just says no, and he also has help.

Although he has never formally attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he often talks to former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Thomas Henderson, a recovering cocaine addict Daly met in January 1993 when Henderson spoke at the Sierra Tucson rehabilitation center in Arizona. Two months ago in Atlanta, he went back to Greg Rita, his caddie in 1992-93 and the man who carried Curtis Strange’s bag for both his U.S. Open titles.

And for most of the past two years, he’s also been with Paulette, his third wife. She is a former model he met at the Bob Hope Classic and married in January in Las Vegas. The couple recently had a girl, her first child, his second, and he made a point in his victory speech Sunday to credit his wife for much of his turnaround.

“It’s not me, he deserves all the credit,” she said Sunday night. “I just try to be there to do everything I can for him. He’s worked so hard on his game, on not giving up, the patience, everything, and this is the perfect payoff. He also drinks a gallon of Diet Coke and as much chocolate as he can stomach, but we’re working on that.”

“If I ever get an urge (to drink), it doesn’t matter if I’m down or up, I always want it,” Daly said Monday. “But I have people who help me. Golf makes me want to drink more because it’s so stressful. We travel as much as the tennis players. Football, it’s five months, all expenses paid and it’s done. We don’t get time off unless you take it, or you’re suspended.”

Besides a 1993 suspension for quitting in the middle of a tournament last September, at the urging of PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, Daly took a “voluntary” leave from the tour. Finchem told Daly it was time to get his life in order after a chaotic ‘94 season that ended with him scuffling with the father of a competitor at the World Series of Golf. The man accused Daly of hitting into his son’s group.

Daly put his golf clubs away for almost two months, playing only once, at Augusta National with University of Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles, a member of the club. He also spent time with his family and said Monday he started to re-think his priorities.

Daly said he was determined to move from Wild Thing to Mild Thing this season while continuing to live one day at a time. He wanted to keep the on-course tantrums to a minimum and his patience on the golf course to the maximum - despite double bogeys or any other adventures that might have made him stomp off in previous years.

“Everybody in this room knows I didn’t have any patience three years ago,” Daly said. “That comes with experience. This year, I’ve been more patient in majors then I ever have before. In ‘93, I had none. In ‘94, I was a little better. In ‘95, I’ve been real good.”

Daly also wanted to make things better among his fellow pros, many of whom considered him a low-rent interloper who was making a mockery of their game. When he was quoted in an interview at last year’s Scottish Open saying he wasn’t the only player addicted to alcohol or drugs, some players could only cringe. Strange fired his own volley back, suggesting Daly “ought to crawl back under the rock he came out from.”

Daly admitted Monday he regretted many of the things he said and also thanked his sponsors for not giving up on him, even if his multi-million-dollar contracts with Wilson and Reebok were in limbo during his ‘94 sabbatical. “I feel like as long as I keep doing the right things on and off the golf course, that’s all I can do,” Daly said. “I’m just trying to do the right thing. I’m just kind of letting it happen.

“Right now, it’s great to get a major sober,” he said. “It only helps me pursue my own career, and I hope to God it helps other people get through the program. I shouldn’t be here today. I could have been killed. … I wouldn’t be able to do this if I wasn’t sober. It’s an everyday battle.”