We all know and love John Daly as arguably the wildest professional golfer to ever walk this planet.
We’re talking about a guy who would party all night long, and still make it to his tee time for a PGA golf tournament the next day. He even won two major championships doing this.
Not to mention, the guy is a Hooters legend, belly-flop champ, and could drink 30-40 beers a day and THEN get started on the liquor. Oh yeah, and he has a country album as well…
The man was built in a lab. He is not human.
Caleb Pressley from Barstool Sports was guest on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast a while back, and they actually discussed the few encounters they’ve had with the legend himself.
Von recalled watching Daly have to get carried out of a RESTAURANT… no, not a bar, a restaurant… in downtown Nashville one night:
“I saw John Daly overdose on gin one night, and had to get carried out of a restaurant. Not even a bar.”
After Von shared the story, Pressley told the story about how he discovered Daly’s secret room in the Hooters headquarters, that was actually tucked away inside former NFL coach John Gruden’s office.
Pressley told the story about his early days at Barstool, and he was trying to figure out good content for the company. He decided he was going to hunt down Jon Gruden, and just talk to him.
After doing some research, he discovered that Gruden’s office was located at the Hooter’s corporate office near Tampa, Florida, and that’s when he found Daly’s secret hiding spot:
“I went into the corporate office, and I was like ‘I’m here to see Jon Gruden.’ By the way the corporate office of Hooters… So I go in there and was like ‘I wanna go see Jon Gruden,’ and they just take me back to his office.
He wasn’t there, but his assistant gave me a tour… And they were like ‘This is John Daly’s room.’ And I was like ‘What do you mean John Daly’s room?’ And they open it up and it was like, you know ‘Chronicles of Narnia,’ the wall has a bunch of books that you can open.
It was literally that and you push it open, and it was a very small room smaller than this room, and it had a mattress on the floor, and a little putting thing, and I guess John Daly lives in there, in Jon Gruden’s office inside the Hooter’s headquarters.”
So, little did we know that John Daly has a secret room in the corporate office of Hooter’s, where he can go and sober up after a long day and night of partying his ass off across the street at the Hooters restaurant.
This sounds like something a rockstar would have set up, and definitely not a professional golfer.
But hey, ol’ John ain’t like the others… and that’s why he’s a legend.
You can check out the full podcast here:
Fun fact: Jon Gruden once caddied for John Daly at the PODS Championship in 2008 (which explains the cover photo).
Jon, who was the coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the time, was chilling in the Hooters Owl’s Nest, where he ran into Daly, who asked him if he wanted to caddie the next round.
And another fun fact: Gruden was a cook at Hooters in the ’80s…
