I’ve been going down a John Daly rabbit hole here lately, and every day I find myself mind-blown over the fact that:
1. He was able to live this full-throttle lifestyle (that’s an understatement), and still succeed.
2. He’s still alive today.
Seriously, Daly is the Koe Wetzel of PGA Tour golf, and there will probably never be another tour player like him.
Last year, he made an appearance on Ernest’s podcast Just Being Ernest, when the country singer/songwriter brought up the time where Daly beat Tiger Woods during the Target World Challenge back in the early 2000s.
Although Daly admitted it was only one of a couple times he ever beat Tiger, it’s how he beat him that made this story so impressive.
After the first day, both Tiger and Daly didn’t play well, but posted the same score, meaning that they’d be playing together the next day.
Daly being Daly, he started pounding bottles of Crown with his team members, and asked Tiger to drink with him.
“Nah, I’m gonna hit some balls… two hours later he comes back…. ‘Hey, you gonna have a drink with us now?’ He goes, ‘Nah I’m gonna go get my gym shorts on and go work out.
Three hours later he comes back, I’m in to my third bottle of Crown, I’m wasted, we’re all just wasted but we’re having a good time.”
Tiger refused, and after Long John was three bottles of Crown deep, Tiger told him that he had to play “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” in front of all the sponsors of the tournament.
Messing with Daly, Tiger handed him a guitar with plastic strings, and the piss-drunk Daly still pulled off an impressive rendition of the song after downing three bottles of Crown.
The next day, the two were paired together, and the hungover Daly proceeded to whoop Tiger by six shots, with the man convincing the greatest golfer on the planet that he was still drinking Crown drinks on the golf course, when it was really only cups of Diet Coke.
“He’s looking at me the whole day, I got drinks coming down, people bringing me drinks on the golf course… I was just making him think they were drinks.”
He then talked about how the two played together in a later tournament, and in between the drive from the 18th hole to the clubhouse, he pounded six Miller Lites in almost no time.
Tiger said:
“You just ain’t right dude.”
He responded:
“Look at me Tiger I have Dunkin’ Donuts, okay, on my sleeve, a Diet pill on my collar. What makes you think I’m not?”
Absolute Legend.
John Daly Used To Drink 35-40 Beers A Day
I’m now fully convinced that John Daly was built in a lab.
It’s no secret that the two-time major championship winner on the PGA Tour is one wild MF’er, as he’s practically lived the majority of the 55-years of his life pounding beers and whiskey, Diet Cokes, rippin’ cigs, and basically living on McDonald’s and Hooters.
Although the man can’t quite play as well as he used to back in the day, it’s truly wild how this man was able to put together the successful golf career he had in the ’90s and early 2000s.
He sat down for an interview with Graham Bensinger back in 2016, and detailed how he used to play his best golf drunk.
He claims that the golf course records he broke all came while playing rip-shit drunk, shirtless, and barefoot, and there were several nights on the PGA Tour where he wouldn’t get back in from a long night of partying until 7-7:30 AM, with a tee time at 8.
He said:
“I wouldn’t sober up until the 13th hole.”
Needless to say, some people are just built different.
Perhaps the craziest part, is just how much alcohol he consumed on a daily basis. He admitted he would drink anywhere from a case of beer, to 35-40 beers
“I could drink, probably a case to 35 beers a day, or 40… Easily, yeah.”
He then said he would start drinking whiskey after the beer.
John Daly & Willie Nelson Duet
And to add to the “Most interesting golfer on the planet” list, the man can play country music too.
In fact, he recently dropped his second album, titled Whiskey & Water.
With it being Masters week and all, I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about the title-track of the album, which features no other than ol’ Willie Nelson himself.
Written by Brinley Addington, Tyler Reeve, and Luke Combs’ guitar player Rob Williford, Daly sings about how he’s friends with a preacher who doesn’t judge him for his actions, and every time he’s ready to put his full-throttle past life behind him, his old buddy Jack Daniel’s always finds a way to get in his ear.
John said back in March in an interview with PGA Tour.com:
“We’ve been friends forever. I know “Whiskey and Water” is going to be played on the radio… because Willie’s on it.”
And while they don’t even play Willie on the radio, it’s still pretty good.
If you’re a fan of golf and country music, you’re gonna like this one a lot:
