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Posted on 05/17/2009 11:55:32 AM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
Golf's prodigal son is attempting an overseas salvage operation. While most fans were focused on Tiger Woods, Henrik Stenson and the Stadium Course at Sawgrass last weekend, the game's once-favorite sideshow pitched up in Italy and nearly trumped the PGA Tour's marquee event.
Closing with a 66 in Turin, John Daly finished tied for second at the BMW Italian Open, notching his first top-10 in any event since Woods clipped him in a playoff at the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship.
The performance in Italy marked his third made cut in four starts this season on the European Tour, Daly's temporary home while he serves the final weeks of a six-month PGA Tour suspension handed down by commissioner Tim Finchem following Daly's latest brush with scandal.
On Oct. 27, Daly passed out in the parking lot outside a Hooters in Winston-Salem, N.C., and police took the intoxicated golfer to jail for a safe night's sleep. Unfortunately, somebody in the department leaked a booking photo of a bloated, boozy Daly in an orange jumper. The picture was an instant Internet sensation. And though Daly was not officially charged in the incident, the tour felt compelled to take action, suspending the game's black sheep until June for conduct detrimental to the tour.
The two-time major champion called the suspension the low point in a career sabotaged by deep personal valleys: three trips to alcohol rehabilitation clinics, four failed marriages, multiple suspensions and fines and millions in gambling losses. His sponsorship with Hooters dissolved and his entire life in foreclosure, Daly seemed to understand that his European exile could be the final chance in a life defined by mulligans.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Looks like the art critic Robert Hughes.
Yes, but Robert Hughes is 71 years old, not 43.
Maybe that is why we are so ready to forgive him his peccadilloes. We are rooting for him in an elemental struggle played out over 18 holes which is really biblical and transcendental.
There are too many good young players. He can still make money and at 50 move to the Champions Tour but unless he eats better, stops smoking and drinking then he may die young.
The only people he has hurt are himself and to a lesser extent his fans, sponsors and some tourneys. He never strangled any dogs, took steroid's (from what we can tell), ran anyone over, beaten anyone up, etc. His problem in compulsive disorders and alcoholism.
“He can do the most childish and outlandish things and yet we do not see him as a hateful man but as an overactive pre-teen whose hormones cause him to squander talents which could only have come from God.”
I see him as a drunken bum.
until John Daly gets clean and sober and works a program it is all just whistling in the dark. He can’t go away soon enough for me. I pray for his getting sober for the long term, but at some point you gotta move on. He is a moving traffic accident. He just shites on God gifts to him. Less gifted are to be admired for their discipline, humility, and hard work. John possesses none of these as he is an active addict and alcoholic. He is a selfish baby that has been given every opportunity and shites on them all and all that have supported him. He is a real loser.
“Ah, my friend, I fear you have not taken to heart our President’s commencement speech.”
Ahhh, but I have...I think this drunken clown’s career should be aborted...
“I pray for his getting sober for the long term, but at some point you gotta move on.”
Exactly. I have nothing but pity for alcoholics...but once or twice through treatment programs and once they understand there is a cure, the self-willed rejection of help, tratment and faith, the rejection of friends and family and the pain you spread makes you a bum...period.
Most people who know anything about alcoholism would not decry John Dally as a drunken bum. He is, of course, and they would not be at all bashful about acknowledging the fact, but those knowledgeable about the recovery from this sort of degradation will tell you that the path up and out for John Dally is not to try harder to be righteous but to get right with his God.
John Daly's problem is not that he is a drunk but that he is estranged. Think of George Bush's come to Jesus meeting with Rev. Billy Graham. The sequence for George Bush was to end the estrangement and then sobriety came relatively easily with relatively little effort.
Have you no demons?
John Daly is a tragic hero. He’s an interesting character. I will continue to root for him.
ML/NJ
John Daly is a tragic hero. He’s an interesting character.
There. Much better now. LOL. Hero John is not. The men and women of our military are heros. The firefighters and many police officers are heros. John Daly? He is just another fallen creature that thinks he is god. When one has been given the world over and over again and spits on all of that and those who have risked to help him, he is no hero. He is an arrogant, ungrateful self indulgent loser.
I disagree. Daly is a real life “Tin Cup”.
He and the late Payne Stewart are my favorite golfers.
“Have you no demons?”
Yep. But being a drunken Bum is a choice, not an affliction, once you understand alcoholism and this bum does. He is choosing to lose. Too bad, too sad....
Think about it, in order to cure alcoholism all the world's alcoholics need is to sit down with you for five minutes while you explain the folly of their ways so they will for ever after refrain from drinking alcohol. If, they are poor pupils and do not do their homework but drink again, you can righteously point out how morally deficient they are.
I wonder why all the moralizers in all of history did not think of that and cure alcoholism centuries ago for once and all?
As I said, being a drunken Bum is a choice, not an affliction, once you understand alcoholism and this bum does. He’s been in treatment, HEUNDERSTANDS THE DISEASE AND CHOOSES TO DO NOTHING. Save your pity for those who don’t undersatnd it. There are millions of them. Many millions have been cured by programs and this bum knows all about them and dimisses them. He’s chosen to be a poor poor pitiful bum. You have chosen to be the reason bums like this keep going down the path; your warm fuzzy pity feeds them like mother’s milk. You are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
He and the late Payne Stewart are my favorite golfers.
Putting a man like Payne and this bum in the same sentence, let alone category, is an abomination.
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