Daly Really Hits It Big With PGA Win : Golf: Tour rookie keeps blasting away with driver and winds up with a one-under-par 71 and a three-stroke victory at Crooked Stick.

It began like a heavyweight championship fight, with an entourage of state and local police escorting John Daly through the teeming crowds and on to the first tee.

It ended with Daly knocking out the entire field, the diabolic Pete Dye-designed golf course, and all those skeptics who said the 25-year-old couldn’t possibly hold on to win a major title in his rookie season on the PGA Tour.

Long John Daly won the PGA Championship Sunday and a $230,000 check that went with it by shooting a one-under-par 71 that put him at 276, 12 under for an event he dominated almost from start to finish, even if he had been added to the field as the ninth and last alternate less than 24 hours before his first tee-off on Thursday afternoon.

His closest pursuer Sunday was Bruce Lietzke, who shot a 70 and finished at 279 when he made a curling 30-foot putt to save par on the 18th hole. Third place went to native Indianan Jim Gallagher Jr., who had the low round of the day, a 67 that left him at 281. But no one really made a run at Daly all day.

Said Lietzke of Arkansas native Daly: “If you look at this kid playing in a major championship, as the ninth alternate, as someone who hasn’t made a name for himself on the Tour, he has to be as long a shot in professional golf as the kid from Columbus (Buster Douglas) beating Mike Tyson.”

Daly seemed oblivious to it all this warm sunny day. He was playing with a borrowed caddie, on a 7,289-yard course he had never seen until he teed off in the first round. His biggest previous victory? Would you believe the Utah Open on the Ben Hogan circuit last year?

The $230,000 more than doubled Daly’s previous 1991 earnings of $166,590.

“I’ll pay off the house” and a new car for his fiancee “and donate $30,000 to any charity the PGA wants,” he said.

And that’s just a start of the financial benefits he will reap. He is now eligible for the $1-million Grand Slam of Golf later this season, with a guaranteed $150,000 to the last-place man.

He has won his way into the rich Tour Championship and the World Series of Golf and the new, unofficial $2.5-million World Championship, all later this year.

And in 1992, there’s the Masters, the U.S. and British Opens and the Tournament of Champions and, in reality, anything he wants to enter--a far different thing than waiting until the last moment to learn he had gained entry to this event.

On Saturday night, Daly went to the Hoosier Dome to watch the Indianapolis Colts “because I got box seats,” and walked through the stands high-fiving with the fans, who also gave him an ovation. His fiancee, Betty Fulford, said he was so relaxed that “all he wanted to do was go out there and throw a football.”

Relaxed was precisely how he played for most of this day, just as he has in every round this week--with a stunning swing that sent his screaming shots soaring to the outer reaches of the Crooked Stick Golf Club course. Occasionally those rocket shots hit the fairway; more often than not he was in the rough or blasting out of a trap. But it never really mattered.

Daly began his day with a three-shot lead, and when he stepped up to the 18th tee after three-putting for a double bogey on No. 17, he still held that advantage over Lietzke. He also knew that all he had to do to win was keep the ball in play on a 445-yard hole with a lake down the entire right side that had terrorized golfers all week. So what did he do?

He knocked his drive close to 300 yards in the first cut of rough down the left side, whacked an eight-iron to 25 feet into the heart of the green, popped his first putt six feet behind the hole, then finished with a putt for par that left them standing and cheering in the bleachers and fairways surrounding the final hole.

As he walked around the course Sunday, Daly slapped palms with spectators from green to tee, tossed golf balls to little children and, as he walked up the final fairway, pumped his fist and waived his hand, then blew a kiss to a crowd he credited for carrying him to “the greatest day of my life.”

It did not exactly start out that way. On the first hole, Daly took out his one-iron and hooked a shot into the left rough. With a tree standing in his way, he promptly knocked a wedge through the leaves and over the green into a back bunker. He blasted out to 15 feet but missed the putt, settling for a bogey that surely set tongues wagging all around the golf course wondering if this was the beginning of the end of a story that was too good to be true.

It wasn’t.

On No. 2, a 432-yard par-four, he hit a drive and wedge to within four feet, walked quickly to the green and knocked in the putt that surely must have calmed his nerves and silenced the Daly-doubters.

And while everyone marveled at the length of his drives, Daly was quietly killing the rest of the field--when they weren’t destroying themselves--with a putter that was definitely a lethal weapon Sunday.

He knocked a sand wedge from the bunker at No. 3 to three feet and made the putt. He saved par at No. 4 with a 10-foot putt. He made a tricky four-footer for birdie at No. 5 that left him at 12 under. He had played five holes and needed only six putts.

Daly strolled down the 10th sipping from a can of soda, his ears ringing with cries of “you’re the boss, John,” and with three consecutive pars, he seemed in total control. When he knocked an eight-iron over a creek and onto the par-three 13th green, then stroked the 25-footer dead in the center of the cup, the tournament essentially was over. That pushed his lead to five strokes, and though Daly claimed he started getting extremely nervous on the 16th tee, it hardly showed. After the 17th, he clung to a three-shot lead.

The 18th hole had claimed some of the game’s finest players all week. Jack Nicklaus had back-to-back double bogies Thursday and Friday, and two unfortunate souls recorded 12s. But Daly fearlessly took out his composite metal driver, knocked his eight-iron on the green and “felt chills running through my body” as he walked quickly up the fairway.

A few minutes later, he was hugging his fiancee, Betty, the hotel executive he plans to marry in Las Vegas in October.

The two met 2 1/2 years ago, when Daly was just a struggling young pro and working more on his image as what she described Sunday as a “party animal,” one of several reasons he is known as “Wild Man” to his friends. He liked to have a good time, and yes, Betty said Sunday, “he did like to drink. He was a typical party person.

“He’s had a difficult life, and a year and a half ago he wanted to quit. Things were not working out for him. I just tried to set some priorities with his life. He had to learn how to relax, and change some things he was doing. I guess I tried to put it all in perspective for him. He’s really settled down in the last year.”

And so, Wednesday, still not knowing if he would be playing here, John Daly and Betty Fulford drove their new BMW 7 1/2 hours from Memphis to Indianapolis, not learning that Nick Price had dropped out to be with his pregnant wife. The rest is golf history.