John Daly battles the game of golf now, not himself

If you prefer your heroes a little flawed, but very real, make room at the table this morning for John Daly, a super-sized athlete formerly too big for the game he chose: golf, where most of the violence takes place in your head.

Have you seen Daly lately? He’s a wisp of a guy, down 64 pounds at the last weigh-in. He’s no longer the blubbery nose guard you remember. Heck, he’s almost an outside linebacker.

He’s leaner, fitter, more focused. He’s got this Hooters girl chasing him -- how’s that for role reversal? -- and pushing-pushing-pushing him to stay on his game. He’s been to Europe and back grooving his Ruthian swing, which got even more ferocious after he dropped the poundage.

Crunch time.

Sunday, Daly left for Munich, Germany, where he’s playing this week. Then the Daly Show heads off to France and then Scotland, where he will hone his comeback at the British Open, one of the two majors he’s collected in a fire-and-brimstone career.

So don’t count John Daly out just yet, though you realists will be forgiven for scoffing Cocoa Puffs all over this page. Daly, 43, and as country as a corn muffin, has let you down before. He could’ve been the next Golden Bear. Instead, Daly became golf’s Beered-Up Bear.

“I think I’m more serious about it,” he said by phone before leaving for Germany. “I’m not the kind of guy who can stop and sign autographs anymore. . . . I just need to stay focused.”

How boring. How un-Daly. How promising. Daly’s comeback attempt is one of this summer’s most interesting stories.

To be sure, it’s complicated, this saga of the good ol’ boy with the gargantuan stroke. Daly always swung a little too hard for the PGA Tour.

He’s had his moments. A British Open in 1995, the PGA Championship in 1991. Galleries adored him. Chicks dig the long ball, of course, and so did golf’s Joe Sixpacks, who saw a little of themselves in his grip-it-and-rip-it style. “Why can’t golf be a little fun?” they asked.

And Big John was the answer.

He could also be 280 pounds of bad sirloin, pure trouble. An estimated $60 million in gambling losses, four failed marriages (he accused the last wife of trying to stick him with a steak knife), a couple of bogeys in rehab.

At a pro-am event, he riled the bosses by hitting a tee shot off a beer can. In most pro sports, that gets you a Miller Lite endorsement. In the humorless world of pro golf, it gets you sanctioned.

The most recent trouble came when the PGA Tour suspended him for six months after he was picked up drunk. To stave off bankruptcy, he spent this year’s Masters selling T-shirts out of the back of his RV.

His life had become a Nia Vardalos movie -- in the sense you couldn’t bear to watch.

Since then, there has been a series of achievements, mostly personal.

“John and I dieted together,” explains Anna Cladakis, the former Hooters promotions director who has been his girlfriend/manager for 18 months. “It didn’t matter what kind of diet he did. Then he just happened to meet a couple of doctors in Clearwater. . . .”

On a Tuesday, he met the doctors. Days later (Feb. 13), he was on a table having a silicone band strung ‘round his gut. Since then, he’s dropped the weight, stopped the drinking, and been back and forth to Europe, where he finished second in the Italian Open and today brings the hammer to the BMW International in Munich.

So, with Cladakis’ help, Daly has quit battling himself and is instead battling the game of golf, which is enough war for any man. After four weeks in Europe, he’ll return to play the Canadian Open and the Buick Open.

He’s got that lap band around his belly but nothing to keep his head in place, other than Cladakis and new swing coach Rick Smith. Oh, and maybe the knowledge that he might be running out of time.

The smart money would be that he’ll fail again. The better, more-compelling bet is that he won’t.

America loves dogged perseverance more than most. Forget Fitzgerald. This is a nation built on second acts.

And golf sure could use the charisma of a Daly, whose epic hunger right now is directed toward more life-affirming things.

He says his swing is faster, smoother. He still coils up like a car spring on his tee shots, then crushes the ball to kingdom come before stepping down the fairway, a few less demons in his bag.

John Daly won’t stop until be becomes a better golfer. On the way, he’s becoming a better man.

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Erskine also writes “Man of the House” for Saturday’s Home section.

chris.erskine@latimes.com