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SOUTHPORT, England – What would Wednesday of an Open Championship be without controversy?
Last year, we had Gary Player alleging there were drug cheats in golf. This year we had the sort of public squabble that is food from heaven for the British tabloids.
John Daly unloaded on former coach Butch Harmon in the most public of golfing arenas.
Harmon sacked Daly at the PODS Championship earlier this year after the two-time major champion was seen drinking in a Hooters hospitality tent during a rain delay, saying Daly wasn’t serious about working on his game. “The most important thing in his life is getting drunk,” Harmon claimed.
The 1995 Open champion got his own back on the eve of the 137th Open Championship. Daly alleges sponsors won’t give him invites because Harmon has concocted lies about Daly’s private life.
“His lies kind of destroyed my life for a little bit. The lies he said about being at the Hooters tent and all this stuff,” Daly said.
“I think he should become a man and talk about some of the stuff he lied about. I just wish he wouldn’t have said the things he did that made you guys (the press) write some pretty bad things about me when nobody really had the facts.
“Butch told the Golf Channel that I’m just a drunk and it was ridiculous that Coach Gruden (Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden) caddied for me. He just made up stuff and didn’t really know the facts were straight, and by putting it all over the world and not talking to me, it’s kind of ridiculous.
“Real men just don’t do that.”
Daly tried to set the record straight about what actually happened at the PODS. His version is that he went into the Hooters’ tent to escape the rain delay and drank Diet Cokes. He said his caddie complained of a sore neck, and so Daly asked Gruden to caddie the last few holes.
“Then the stories come out that I was drinking in the tent, drunk and stuff on Thursday, and it’s a joke,” Daly said. “I would never do that in a round knowing I’ve got to go back out.”
Daly missed the cut and went back to the Hooters tent Saturday to sign what he estimates were 1,000 autographs. He said he had a couple of beers that day but that it was no “big deal.”
Daly claims he confronted Harmon about the issue.
“I tried talking to him on the phone at the Byron Nelson and he said he’d retract what he said but he never did,” Daly said.
When asked Wednesday about Daly’s comments, Harmon told the Associated Press, “I’m sorry JD feels that way. I like JD. He’s a good guy. But he needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility for his actions instead of blaming everybody else.”
Of course, Daly is popular with the tabloid press over here. His trials and tribulations, failed marriages, battles with the bottle and other misdemeanors are the sort of material the tabloids thrive on.
What pleased the tabloid writers most was that Daly offered this information unprompted. No one had even asked him about Harmon. An innocent question about struggling to get invites started Daly off, and there was no stopping him.
The pièce de résistance? The headline every tabloid will run on its back page on the first day of the championship.
“I don’t know what his problem is, but he needs to stay as far away from me as possible,” Daly said.
Ah, tabloid heaven.
Posted: 7/16/2008
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