John Daly

John Daly has struggled all his life from alcohol addiction and faced severe consequences due to his drunken behaviour. Daly has managed to successfully control his urges since then and while talking about his long struggle with the addiction, he said that it was mostly due to his father, who was an alcoholic and an abuser.

In 2009, Daly’s weight became a big concern for him so much so that he had to undergo a Lip-band surgery in order to keep off the extra fat. He started eating healthy and limited his alcohol intake, which ended up having him lose more than 100 pounds.

He has had a pretty unsuccessful life when it comes to relationships. He has married four times, and neither of them worked. Most of his marriage breakups were the results of alleged violent behaviour he was infamous for and his alcohol addiction.

John Patrick Daly was born in Carmichael, California on 28th April 1966 to Jim and Lou. John was their third and youngest kid after a daughter, Leslie, and a son, Jamie.

John’s father, Jim, was not present for the most part of growing up years of his children. He worked at nuclear power plants and kept roaming around to places, sometimes for weeks and months. The children missed their father and without a suitable guidance, went all out and did their own things.

When he was 4 years old, John discovered his fascination with the sport of golf, after his father gifted him two cut-off golf clubs, which was mostly out of the guilt to never be able to be with him much. John dwelled himself in the sport and started practising out for fun and eventually got addicted to it.

Due to father’s extremely hectic schedule, the family kept moving to different places and once when they settled in Arkansas, John’s interest in golf grew as a fully blown passion. He started messing with his golf clubs at a local ‘nine hole layout’ and became fascinated with the sport spending hours and hours learning the tricks of the game.

As a youngster, John also liked football and baseball and played for his school team. But it never satisfied him and his love for golf persisted over all the years while he was in school.

Daly initiated his professional golf career as an amateur in the US Open and performed poorly to everybody’s expectations. He turned a professional by the next year and ended up securing a decent victory in 1987 in Missouri Open. In 1990, he won Ben Hugan Utah Classic and exhibited great skill and talent which caught the public eye.

In 1991, it was the PGA championship which gave him the stardom he deserved. His aggressive style of hooks and swings earned him an exuberant media attention and as he ended winning the tournament despite being a newbie, and developed a cult like following among the sport fans.

His winning streak continued between 1992 and 1994, but that was the time he started indulging more and more into alcohol, which eventually became the biggest talking point about him than his game. In 1994, he was suspended by the PGA tour for incessantly walking out of the course in an ongoing tournament, which eventually forced him to take his alcoholism seriously and he admitted himself into a rehab.

Daly ended up gaining his second major at the British Open in 1995 but his alcoholism and personal life kept dragging him down and his career halted, to utter disappointment of his fans and colleagues. During those years, his game was severely affected due to weight and drinking problems, which also wreaked havoc in his personal life.

He made a strong comeback in 2004 with a win in the Buick Invitational game and got selected as the ‘PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year’. He reached top 4 in the statistical golf rankings in that year, but didn’t win any other tournament for a long until 2014, when he emerged winner in Beko Classic by one shot.

Daly partnered up with Loudmouth Golf line of apparels and it became so successful that it was hard to meet the excess demand.

Daly also owns a company called ‘JD Designs’ that designs golf courses and has designed several golf courses across USA, Canada and Europe, making it one of the most important companies in the sector.

In 2014, John Daly signed an endorsement deal with Rock Bottom Golf, a popular discount golf retailer.

Sometime later, Daly also came up with a wine label named John Daly Wines, but it was unsuccessful and he had to shut it down soon afterwards.

Daly has also been the face of a video game for Oxygen Games with the release of their game ‘John Daly’s Prostroke Golf’ which features Daly as an instructor as well as a player. The game featured several golf courses modelled on the real ones across the world and was a huge hit among the golf enthusiasts.