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This Day In Sports…August 11, 1991:
John Daly wins the first of his two major championships in dominating fashion at the PGA Championship in suburban Indianapolis. It was also Daly’s first PGA Tour victory. The 25-year-old gripped it and ripped it to the tune of a three-stroke triumph over Bruce Lietzke, maintaining the three-shot lead he held at the end of the third round. It was remarkable in that Daly had been the ninth alternate to get into the tournament at the beginning of the week. But a series of withdrawals allowed him to qualify, and he drove through the night to tee off.
During the first round a spectator, Thomas Weaver, was struck and killed by lightning while on his way back to his car after the course was evacuated. Weaver’s daughters, Emily and Karen, were 12 and 8 at the time, respectively. Daly donated $30,000 of his $230,000 in prize money to Weaver’s family to go toward a college fund. Both girls went on to graduate, and Karen is now a doctor.
Daly’s career has been a wild and sometimes controversial ride, though. He was (and still is) relatable to the casual golf fan with his loud wardrobe and his down-home demeanor. But Daly was suspended from the PGA Tour from late in the 1993 season into early 1994 due to on-course outbursts and other breaches of golf etiquette. Most incidents were tied to his battles with alcohol, as he has been in and out of rehab during much of his career.
The ups include Daly’s win in the 1995 British Open in a playoff for his only other victory in a major. In 1997, he became the first golfer to average over 300 yards per drive over a PGA Tour season. On the other hand, with his career on a slide in 2011, Daly played in the Albertsons Boise Open at Hillcrest Country Club and missed the cut.
The concern these days is for Daly’s health. This year alone he has undergone emergency surgery on his hand, his 16th operation on the hand since 2021. Daly was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020, but he’s been in remission for four years. “I’m like Lazarus—I keep coming back from the dead,” he told The Independent in May. “Waking up is a win for me.” But he’s back playing selected events on the Champions Tour, and he’s front-and-center in pop culture with his cameo in “Happy Gilmore 2.”
A footnote: Daly’s son, John Daly II, is an accomplished golfer in his own right. The younger Daly tees off today at the U.S. Men’s Amateur at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. He’s going into his senior season at the University of Arkansas, where he picked up his first collegiate tournament victory this spring and compiled a team-best 72.21 scoring average. Daly II also won the prestigious Southern Amateur Championship by five strokes last month. (Also in the field today is Boise State star Cole Rueck, who qualified by winning the Idaho Men’s Amateur last month in McCall.)
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
