L.A. OPEN : Don’t Tell Him Golfers Only Drive for Show

It’s easy to see why the American public loves John Daly.

The American people always love the John Dalys. They worship power. They want their heroes not merely to win but to crush the other guys. Split decisions and tiebreakers bore Americans. They want one-round knockouts.

Look at all the fans the Yankees had in the years they were winning World Series with scores like 18-4, 13-5, 12-6, 16-3, 12-0 and 10-0.

The fans like movies titled “The Terminator,” “Rambo.” “Superman.” Sir Laurence Olivier was the superior actor, but John Wayne sold tickets. They like movies--and fighters--named “Rocky.” We’re not a subtle people. The coaches were right--winning isn’t everything, it’s winning big that is. The “Hitless Wonders” don’t get it. “Murderers’ Row” does.

We go for Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, tennis players nicknamed “the Rocket,” not “Bitsy” or “Bunny.” We want “the Sultan of Swat,” “the Manassa Mauler,” “the Brown Bomber,” “the Astoria Assassin,” not guys named Evander or Ezzard. The 1940 Chicago Bears winning the championship, 73-0, feeds the group esteem. “We will rock you!” is the real national anthem.

We want Secretariat winning by 31 lengths, not a nose. We like fastball pitchers, not junk throwers. We want 7-foot dunkers in basketball, not point guards. We want hat-trick hockey players, not penalty killers. Power might corrupt--but that’s all right with us.

Golf is no different. We don’t want guys who putt their way to the championship. We don’t brag about short games. We want guys who take the course by the throat.

You ever know a golfer who dreamed of becoming a great putter? You ever go to a driving range and see a truck driver practicing his nine-irons? Nah! He’s got a wood in his hands. He doesn’t want to be a chip-shot artist. He wants to be John Daly. Jack Nicklaus. Arnold Palmer.

He wants the guys who hit the ball so high and so far two groups could play through before it comes down.

No one has hit the ball as far as John Daly does. Nicklaus came closest. Hogan hit it as far as he wanted to.

But golf is funny game. It’s really two games. Schizophrenic. It’s one game from tee to green and another one when you get there. Golf is a discipline. Control is critical.

The reality is, there have always been big hitters in golf. George Bayer, Jimmy Thompson, Mike Souchak. They haven’t mattered in the long run. They really had to scale down their sweeps at the ball to be competitive. It’s an anomaly of the game that the bombers have to throttle back their distance to score and be competitive.

That’s the beauty of John Daly. He hasn’t yet given in to the demons of golf who punish you for cannonading it. He still has that awesome 380-to-400 degree arc where the club almost hits the ground on the backswing. And the ball heads for the ionosphere.

The public loves it.

There’s an old saying in golf, “Drive for show but putt for dough.” You win money on the green, not on the tee.

John Daly gives the lie to the old adage. He drives for a lot of dough. He has won only three tournaments, but he’s only 28 and he drives for dough, big dough.

Take the second round of the Nissan L.A. Open at Riviera on Friday. Daly teed off behind a threesome that included a guy, Kenny Perry, who was tying the course record, 62. But he was doing it with putts. He had only a handful of stragglers following him. But the crowd behind him was elbowing for position, trampling one another to see Daly. They might have stumbled across Perry and asked, “Pardon me--did you see John Daly come through here?”

They don’t really care if he hits the ball out of bounds. They would rather see him hit a 325-yard drive over the fence than see any other golfer make an eagle. After all, there’s nothing dramatically enticing about a well-hit six-iron. It’s a golf version of a left jab.

Daly will not compromise with the grand old game. He shows no inclination to cut back on the horsepower. He is almost the only golfer on tour who carries only one wood--a driver. It has a seven-degree loft. To give you an idea, the Empire State Building probably has a seven-degree loft. There’s little margin for error there. Your friendly discount-store driver probably has 11 or 12 degrees. If you had a seven-degree driver, you would probably not get the ball in the air.

He’s not even carrying a one-iron this week. He doesn’t need it. If the driver is too much (i.e., if the hole is less than 320 yards), he uses a two-iron. It’s almost like spotting Riviera the first draw.

If you’ve never seen Ruth bat, Koufax pitch, Dempsey punch or Jordan soar, you probably should see John Daly tee off.

That notion occurred to about half the crowd at Riviera on Saturday.

He was hardly shooting a course record. In fact, on the back nine, he was busy defending himself from the course.

He began the day by knocking Riviera around for eight holes. He had moved from six under par to nine under.

The wheels didn’t exactly come off, but they began to flatten. A six at the par-four 15th hole turned the tournament back to the guys who carry three or more woods and a one-iron, the guys who romance the course, not scare it to death.

It won’t matter to the crowd. American galleries aren’t into bunters, jabbers, clinchers, guys who say, “I’ll play these.” They like the guy who swings for the fences, wouldn’t clinch with a leopard and with 16 showing says, “Hit me!”

They used to say watching Ruth strike out was more exciting than watching anybody else hit a triple. Watching Daly make six can be more memorable than a lot of guys making two.

The hope is, nobody talks him into adding a four-wood or five-wood, practicing layups and adding three degrees of loft to his driver. That would be as big a national calamity as if they kept Babe Ruth a pitcher. Or taught Dempsey footwork. It might be good golf, but it ain’t big box office. It’ll never play in Peoria. Or at Riviera.