John Daly arrives on the US Senior Tour

 ready to move the needle again

FROM GOLFWEEK.COM By Adam Schupak

John Daly at 50 (Getty Images)

John Daly celebrated his 50th birthday on April 23, playing golf in a charity outing at Cowboy Golf Club in Dallas. He described it as “really quiet,” just hanging with a bunch of friends. 
That Daly has made it to 50 has to be something of a minor miracle. Add in that it was a quiet occasion and the apocalypse may soon be upon us.
Long time pal Fuzzy Zoeller once bet Daly $150,000 that he wouldn’t live long enough to be eligible for the PGA Tour Champions. It seemed as likely as Leicester City winning the season-long English Premier League title.
“He even said he thought it was 40,” Daly said with a chuckle. “I told him just give me a bottle of your Fuzzy’s vodka and we’ll call it even.
Daly compared Leicester’s improbable championship run to his victory at the 1991 US PGA Championship at Crooked Stick Golf Club outside of Indianapolis when he shocked the golfing world as ninth alternate.
“They’re underdogs and that’s what I’ve always been,” he said. 
Daly was the original 5,000-to-1 shot that came in. Greg McLaughlin, former Nissan (L.A.) Open tournament director and now president of the US PGA Tour Champions circuit, recounted a story from shortly before Daly’s meteoric rise.
“We did a long-drive competition at Nissan (in L.A.) early in 1991,” McLaughlin said. “There was a shootout at the tournament, and then there was a long-drive exhibition, and it was incumbent on the tournament to go ask five guys. They got money, with first place paying like two grand. Every one of the guys would say, ‘Is (John) Daly in it? If he’s in it, I’m not in.’ And I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ ”
With his tape-measure blasts, Daly made his “grip it and rip it” style a national sensation. In the years that followed, he won the 1995 Open at St. Andrews among his five Tour victories.

John Daly holds the Claret Jug after winning the 1995 Open at St. Andrews. / Getty Images

Daly also was as wild as the wind in his hometown of Dardanelle, Arkansas. Flush with money, he was always itching to raise hell. He never had trouble finding a suitably irresponsible companion. For drinking. For gambling. Let him loose in a casino and he was fully off his leash. Daly was the ringleader of his own burlesque. We watched in amusement, astonishment and then horror.
Somehow he managed to survive. All these years later, Daly doesn’t swim in regret.
“What can you do?” Daly said. “I’ve apologized. We all make mistakes, and most of the guys have forgiven me.”
He had human faults and super-hero strengths. He admittedly squandered his talent, his fortune, and more opportunities and second chances than he rightfully deserved.
Now he is on the verge of golf’s ultimate mulligan. He’ll make his  Champions Tour debut May 6-8 at the Insperity Invitational at the Woodlands (Texas) Country Club.
Perhaps no Tour pro who has earned more than $10 million in his career has ever counted the days until his 50th birthday. In almost any game played today, the half-century man is long gone. 
Years ago, he had to step aside to make room for a younger, fitter, better model. Except in golf, the only place where the 50-or-older set still holds a special fascination with fans who won’t let the geezers go.
Billy Casper once described the senior tour as “walking through a field, kicking over stones and finding thousands of dollar bills.”
Daly’s arrival on the senior scene is one of the most heralded in years. He needs the US PGA Tour's Champions circuit as much as it needs him. Daly is jumping onto the senior tour like a man finding a wallet on the street. 
He already has officially committed to the next five events, and tells Golfweek he will play 12 events in a row beginning in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Regions Tradition.
In his prime, Daly gave his fans more than they paid for. What lay behind his enormous popularity?
Fans swarmed to Daly like bees to honey because he was a man of the people.
“His struggles are what people kind of embrace,” said Bud Martin of Wasserman and Daly’s long time manager. “John was an open book for everyone to read. It was a tremendous book. You could make an argument that John is one of the top 10 most influential players in the game. 
"Who moved the needle besides Arnold, Jack and Tiger? I would make an argument that John Daly was right there with that.”
The hope of McLaughlin and Daly’s competitors is he will spur fans to show up in droves and tune in like they did for megawatt stars like Arnie, Jack and, more recently, Freddie.
“I’ve got the greatest fans in the world. No matter what, through thick and thin, they’ve always stuck by me,” Daly said. “They’ve pumped me up and I feed off of them and I always have and probably always will.”
His legion of fans loved him for more than just his super-hero strengths. Daly possessed the human touch and a rare ability to relate.
“He’s different,” Bryan Naugle, the executive director of the Insperity Invitational said of Daly. “He’s definitely a blue-collar, beer-drinking, not a country-club, cookie-cutter guy. I think people relate to him. We’ll get some people who like to come out and watch NASCAR.”
The senior circuit’s no-cut, low pressure affairs should be a perfect fit for Daly. But to really move the needle, he’ll have to do more than just show up in his outlandish Loudmouth outfits and chain-smoke Marlboros. 
Shaking hands, kissing babies and telling lies will only go so far.
“He’s going to have to win,” Nick Price said. “That’s the big thing. If he dominates out there, it’ll be great. But he’s got to go out there and win. If he doesn’t do well, he’ll get a few people in there, but … winning, that’s going to be the big key.”

John Daly, pictured during the 2015 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits / Getty Images

Can Daly have one more run at being the tour’s leading man? No one doubts that he still possesses the length to manhandle the circuit’s shorter courses, but does he still have those pillow-soft hands and silky stroke around and on the greens? 
Daly set the bar low, claiming his game is rusty and he will have to learn new courses and he’s content to have a consistent schedule.
“My game is nowhere (near) where I want it to be,” he said. “It’s kind of a learning process, and playing competitive golf hopefully will get me back in that rhythm where you can start playing and get some confidence.”
But when he steps to the first tee on Friday, expect Long John to go after the ball as if the clock has been dialled back to 1991 and he’s at Crooked Stick.
Grip it and rip it. Even now, he knows no other way.
– Jeff Babineau contributed to this report