You might have noticed that British golfer Charley Hull broke the internet early in the week when she had the temerity to sign a few on course autographs while taking a drag on a gasper (that’s smoking a cigarette for the younger readers…)
It led to Charley being likened to John Daly who was known to enjoy a quick ciggie on the links too, though ‘Long John’ took his hellraising rather further than a fondness for tobacco back in his heyday.
In one of professional golf’s true rollercoaster careers, John Daly carried off two Majors, the PGA Championship in 1991 and The Open at St Andrews four years later, coming out on top in a play-off against Constantino Rocca.
Rookie of the Year when he won that PGA crown in 1991, getting a wild card entry just two days before the tournament started, by the time of The Open in 1995, after being suspended from the US tour in 1992 while he was treated for alcoholism and being the Wild Thing of golf through much of the early ‘90s, Daly’s star had fallen so far he was an 80-1 shot to lift the claret jug.
Having traded bourbon for Battenbergs, his liking for pastry was rather kinder on his game, if not his figure, than the booze, and at St Andrews, he was in complete control of the course and, most significantly, of himself.
When Rocca hold a 65 foot putt on the 18th to force a play-off with Daly, it might have caused a lesser ma to believe the Gods were against him, but instead, Daly turned up the pressure in the four hole play-off. Rocca couldn’t live with it, Daly winning by four shots. You can read Golf Monthly’s superb coverage of the 1995 Open here.
