Long John Daly Hits It Big

By EUGENE LINDEN/CASTLE ROCK

Fresh from the awesome display that won him the 1991 P.G.A. Championship, John Daly got ready to hit a few practice balls last week in preparation for the International tourney at Colorado's Castle Pines Golf Club. As word spread that he was on the practice tee, a crowd gathered, whistling appreciatively as he casually knocked iron shots into the far reaches of the range.

Then he took out his titanium-shafted Cobra driver, and the whistles turned to disbelieving laughter as he started launching balls over the road beyond the driving range. On neighboring tees, pros like Jose Maria Olazabal and Ian Baker-Finch broke off their own practice regimens to watch the ballistic display. A few minutes later Daly headed for the course. His first drive was a monster 364-yd. shot, followed by a 280-yd. 3-iron blast. In short order, Daly turned the 644-yd., par-5 first hole, the longest on the P.G.A. tour, into an ordinary par 4.

If all Daly had to offer was power, he would be a curiosity in made-for-TV long-ball contests. But the burly, unassuming 25-year-old with the swing-for- the-fences style is something more: a genuine athletic phenomenon. The man who stunned the best golfers in the world during the P.G.A. Championship at Crooked Stick combined impossibly long tee shots with soft irons, and dead-on putts that left no openings for his rivals. During the final four holes, a stretch when even veteran players get the willies and lose major tournaments, Daly dealt with his mounting nervousness by playing harder. On the final hole of the tournament, he says, he took his biggest swing of the entire competition. It landed in the rough; Daly salvaged a par 4. "I came to the P.G.A. tournament with nothing to lose," he says, "and I think that had everything to do with winning it." Later, he improved on his spectacular triumph by promising $30,000 of the $230,000 prize to the children of a spectator killed by lightning at the tournament.

Daly realized he had talent when he won a junior tournament in Ohio at 16. Only a year ago, however, the former All-America from the University of Arkansas was so disillusioned with his playing that he considered quitting. His fiancee, Betty Fulford, counseled him to stay with it. He joined the P.G.A. tour in March and earned $166,000 before hitting the jackpot last week.

In an era when many touring pros act more like accountants than athletes, Daly makes fans remember that golf is a thrilling sport. Rarely pausing for more than a quick glance, Daly plays as though he were being pursued by revenuers. "Sooner or later you're going to have to hit it anyway," he says, noting that fast play helps reduce the pressure. His simple philosophy -- "I just hit it hard as I can, and if I find the ball I hit it again" -- strikes a responsive chord in galleries. Moreover, Daly is a rarity: a self-made player. He says he learned to hit the ball by watching Jack Nicklaus on TV, by looking at instructional diagrams in golf magazines, and by experimenting with what felt natural as he played on a rural nine-hole course in Dardanelle, Ark.

The result is a unique movement that is the key to his huge drives. Daly takes the club farther back, turns through his swing more completely, and follows through more fully than any other touring pro, and still manages to maintain his balance. With his broad shoulders and strong legs, the result is blinding club speed. According to golf coach David Leadbetter, the average pro golf swing moves the club head at perhaps 110 m.p.h. Daly's driver may be traveling 140 m.p.h. when it hits the ball. Says golf legend Sam Snead, who also hit thunderous drives in his prime: "I never saw a man who could take a club that far back and drive that well for that long. But if that swing ever comes unglued, they will never find the ball."

Daly is well aware of the pitfalls of his contortionist's swing. "I may have to change when I'm 35," he says, "if I still have a back." But for now, Daly believes that the rewards of being able to fly over hazards placed on fairways where mortal golfers risk falling into them, and then following up with shorter, more accurate irons, offset the wild shots.

There is a long list of golfers who have risen from obscurity to win major contests only to return to a comfortable and lucrative mediocrity. Crooked Stick, with its long fairways and soft greens, may have been the perfect course for Daly. The question remains as to how he will fare on narrower, firmer fairways where power can make a bad situation disastrous. Can he, in short, become a superstar?

Many pros feel that Daly will have to change the very peculiarities that have made him golf's latest hero if he is to get the most out of his prodigious natural ability. It may be that Daly's swing is too complicated and his game too reliant on intangibles to carry him to the level of his idol Nicklaus. But there is something heroic in the quotable slugger's triumph, and it would be a shame to see him become one of the legion of golf technocrats who threaten to turn the sport into a boring science. There may be a lesson for other pros in the enormous fan response to golf's new Sultan of Swing: people love athletes who shoot for the stars.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York