Well, the most anticipated ESPN “30 for 30” ever on a golfer – OK, it was the first of these dedicated to a golfer – has now been seen on TV.
The highly anticipated “Hit It Hard,” which chronicled the rise and turbulent times of John Daly’s golfing prime premiered to excited golf fans wanting to learn everything Daly. We watched it in earnest and put together a list of the most poignant quotes and anecdotes from the special. Plenty of fascinating material from it all.
Without further ado, here we go…
*** NOTE: The following may contain spoilers if you haven’t viewed the documentary yet. ***
Best Quotes
-“I’m young at heart. And I hit it hard.” – John Daly
-“He hit so far past everybody, it was like watching a new species.” – David Feherty on Daly at his ’91 PGA win
-“I’ve never been dishonest with the fans, and I think they appreciate that about me.” – Daly
-“I got lazy, I didn’t work on the game like I needed to.” – Daly, being candid about losing his work ethic after all the money poured in following PGA win
-“When I was successful, I thought I had the world by the balls. I started drinking, gambling, wasting time. … I wasn’t taught how to be successful. It got to a point, ‘Screw this, I’ll go to a bar, get drunk and deal with this tomorrow.’ ” – Daly, elaborating further on his motivation issues
-“When he puts a gun in your eye and doesn’t know who you are because he’s so drunk, you tend to shy away from someone like that, doesn’t matter if you’re family or whatever.” – Daly on the depths of his father’s abuse
-“I made comments like if I was buzzing right now, I would be 4 under on this side.” – John Daly on how he would think he might play better drunk than sober
-“What better validation than to win the (1995) British Open sober.” – Paulette Dean, Daly’s third ex-wife
-“It was the most embarrassing day of my life, people thinking I hit my wife.” – Daly referring to his arrest on third-degree assault against then-wife Bettye in 1992 (Daly would eventually plead guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor harassment)
-“The amount of money he would gamble was outrageous. Outrageous.” – Dean
-“The game of golf, if you’re in the hunt, you’ve got adrenaline going. But you got 140 to 300, 400,000 on the blackjack table, you’re going to have adrenaline. And I think that’s what I loved more than anything.” – Daly
-“To have legends take you under and say, ‘Hey, get your crap together now. We love you, we need you.’ It meant a lot.” – Daly
-“Lows cannot defeat me and cannot defeat the highs I’ve had in my life.” – Daly, on his tumultuous path
Best Anecdotes
-“I’m young at heart. And I hit it hard.” – John Daly
-“He hit so far past everybody, it was like watching a new species.” – David Feherty on Daly at his ’91 PGA win
-“I’ve never been dishonest with the fans, and I think they appreciate that about me.” – Daly
-“I got lazy, I didn’t work on the game like I needed to.” – Daly, being candid about losing his work ethic after all the money poured in following PGA win
-“When I was successful, I thought I had the world by the balls. I started drinking, gambling, wasting time. … I wasn’t taught how to be successful. It got to a point, ‘Screw this, I’ll go to a bar, get drunk and deal with this tomorrow.’ ” – Daly, elaborating further on his motivation issues
-“When he puts a gun in your eye and doesn’t know who you are because he’s so drunk, you tend to shy away from someone like that, doesn’t matter if you’re family or whatever.” – Daly on the depths of his father’s abuse
-“I made comments like if I was buzzing right now, I would be 4 under on this side.” – John Daly on how he would think he might play better drunk than sober
-“What better validation than to win the (1995) British Open sober.” – Paulette Dean, Daly’s third ex-wife
-“It was the most embarrassing day of my life, people thinking I hit my wife.” – Daly referring to his arrest on third-degree assault against then-wife Bettye in 1992 (Daly would eventually plead guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor harassment)
-“The amount of money he would gamble was outrageous. Outrageous.” – Dean
-“The game of golf, if you’re in the hunt, you’ve got adrenaline going. But you got 140 to 300, 400,000 on the blackjack table, you’re going to have adrenaline. And I think that’s what I loved more than anything.” – Daly
-“To have legends take you under and say, ‘Hey, get your crap together now. We love you, we need you.’ It meant a lot.” – Daly
-“Lows cannot defeat me and cannot defeat the highs I’ve had in my life.” – Daly, on his tumultuous path
Best Anecdotes
–Origins of Daly’s one-of-a-kind swing: Daly got his first golf clubs when he was 4 years old, but it was an adult set. As he explains in “Hit It Hard,” he never got the set cut down, and because regular-size adult clubs were so long and heavy for a 4-year-old, when Daly took the clubs back on a swing, they would keep going and going well beyond parallel. Thus, his extremely long action was born.
–Daly’s weird diets and cigarette habit: Daly recalls that in order to play college golf at Arkansas, he was told he had to shed some weight. So, he lost 67 pounds in 2 1/2 months thanks to the time-tested diet of … Jack Daniel’s and popcorn. As for a long-term way to keep off weight, Daly claims that then-Razorbacks coach Steve Loy – who would go on to coach at Arizona State and then become Phil Mickelson’s agent – told him, “Smoke a cigarette, it’ll curb your appetite.” And (allegedly) thus began a 30-year habit for Daly that persists to this day.
–But the diets didn’t stick… As has been well chronicled, Daly would struggle mightily with alcohol, eliciting multiple trips to rehab during his career. But when he was sober in 1995, he had to replace that vice with something. One new addiction was chocolate. So much so that he had chocolate chip muffins every single day at that year’s British Open and then, after somehow winning the event, filled the Claret Jug – the actual one, not a replica – with chocolate ice cream, which he downed quickly.
–Daly’s drinking during PGA Tour play: OK, it only happened once, but as Daly explained, he did drink alcohol mid-round at the L.A. Open one year: “It was so slow and I played the back nine first. I think I’m two or three over. I went in the locker room and downed like five beers, and I think I shot four under on the front nine. That is the only time I know that I drank during a round, and I played great. I played great that week. I finished strong.”
–Daly explains why gambling drew him in: Another one of Daly’s vices was gambling. It got so bad that he would sell Dean’s possessions to get more money for the out-of-control habit. Daly noted that he would gamble for days straight. In all, he estimates he lost $95-98 million gambling and won $40-45 million, meaning a net loss of somewhere north of $50 million!
–Daly’s acts of near-suicide: Any thoughts of suicide are severe, but Daly’s demons did far more than just suggest to him to end his life. He was actually very close to committing suicide on two occasions. The first came in 1997 and involved a time when he encountered fellow pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller as Daly was being wheeled out toward an ambulance (with police also on the scene) after passing out from a night of binge drinking. Zoeller asked him if everything was all right, to which Daly responded, “Why don’t you grab that cop’s gun and just f***ing kill me?” Even more frightening, at another time that same year, Daly was alone in his Mercedes at the edge of a cliff in California and made a call to Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson – a Cowboys linebacker in the ’70s who famously overcame a debilitating drug addiction – telling his good friend, “I’m on a mountaintop. … There will be no more John Daly tomorrow.” A desperate Henderson started to cry and then gave a last-ditch attempt to save Daly from ending his life. Henderson details, “I said, ‘John, will you do me a favor? I’ve never asked you to do anything for me.’ I said, ‘Go home.’ ” His message worked, as Daly went home alive. If not for Henderson, we would have lost Daly 19 years ago. Powerful.
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