GOLF / SHAV GLICK : Daly Has a Big Appetite for More Success

When John Daly received word that he had been invited to play in the Skins Game at PGA West, he was elated--not so much for the opportunity to play for $540,000 in a format made for his game--but for the chance to sit down over dinner with Jack Nicklaus.

“I’d like to find out how Jack Nicklaus handled everything when he was young, and I think the best place would be at dinner with me and (wife) Betty,” Daly said in a telephone interview. “He has always handled things so well. I could learn a lot in finding out how.”

Daly was referring to the pressures of instant fame, brought on by the prodigious golf swing that won him the PGA championship--pressures from sponsors, reporters, advertisers, tournament chairmen and even his fellow players.

Daly, Nicklaus, U.S. Open winner Payne Stewart and defending champion Curtis Strange will play in the ABC-TV event Nov. 30-Dec. 1 on the treacherous PGA West Stadium Course in La Quinta.

“It’s funny, the big tour is so weird, so much different from the Hogan tour or the South African tour,” Daly said. “It’s so much big business, it gets to be like a soap opera. Rumors pop up everywhere, and you never know where they start.

“Like when (radio commentator) Paul Harvey said I’d been to the hospital twice since I won the PGA (last August). Where on earth did he get something like that? I haven’t had time to go the hospital since then, even if I needed to, which I haven’t.

“But that’s life on the big tour. A lot of players spend more time worrying about what I’m doing than they do about themselves. I guess it’s jealousy over what’s happening to me, all the attention and everything.”

The best advice he has had so far, he said, was offered by Fuzzy Zoeller and Chubby Checker.

“They told me to write my own checks and don’t listen to what people say,” Daly said.

“Mostly what I do when I hear things like that Harvey deal is just laugh. I came out here this year with two objectives, to make rookie of the year and keep my (player’s) card. I accomplished both of them.”

Daly’s stunning victory in the PGA, when he tamed the long and difficult Crooked Stick course near Indianapolis, earned him a 10-year exemption on the tour and a lifetime entry into the PGA tournament.

Daly, a graduate of the 1990 Hogan tour, then used the South African tour as a springboard to getting his player’s card for the PGA Tour.

“The Hogan tour is like family,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, it’s the way the PGA tour was when it started. Everybody takes care of each other. They travel together, eat together, have fun together. On the big tour, everybody sort of stays off to themselves.

“My favorite, though, is the South African tour. It is sort of in between the Hogan and the PGA. All of the tournaments are televised and a lot more people come out to watch than they do on the Hogan. I won two tournaments and the confidence I gained there was a big part of my making it this year. It’s where my career really took off and I don’t mind saying, I really enjoyed it over there.”

Daly also won the Nissan Skins Game in South Africa, earning a $35,000 pot that financed him in the PGA Tour school finals.

“The top American gets invited to their skins game and I was fourth on the Order of Merit, so I got to play,” he said. “I love the way they play the skins. You can grip it and rip it, and not worry where it goes, like you do in stroke play. Every hole is like a little tournament itself. I fire at the flags and see what happens.”

In a skins game, the low score on each of the 18 holes is worth a predetermined amount of money, but if two or more players tie, the money is carried over to the next hole, where everyone takes another shot at it.

Daly’s biggest problem, outside the demands on his time as golf’s brightest young star, is his eating regimen.

“My favorite meal is two double cheeseburgers, an order of large fries and a large double Coke at McDonald’s,” he said. “Usually I go through the drive-through so Betty and I can listen to the music while we’re waiting, instead of standing in line. I’ve been gaining so much weight, though, that maybe I ought to start eating chef’s salads.”

He said he didn’t expect to take Nicklaus to dinner at the fast-food restaurant, however.

Even though he was a ranking junior player, Daly saw only one professional tournament as a teen-ager.

“I never was interested in things like getting autographs or hanging around players,” he said. “The only tournament I ever saw was the Kemper Open at Congressional when I was about 14 and we lived in Virginia. I followed Jerry Pate and Tom Kite. I wanted to see how they hit the ball, but I didn’t see any long backswings like mine.”

No one else ever has, either.

Daly often hears suggestions that he modify his exaggerated backswing to gain better control over the ball, but he rejects them.

“Age may change it, but that’s the only way it’s going to change,” he said. “I’m not going to change it on my own.”

Especially for a Skins Game where he can “grip it and rip it.”

Golf Notes

Paul Jenkins of Indian Wells is the new president of the Southern California Golf Assn., succeeding Marion Farmer of Bel-Air. Jenkins, 63, is a member of Eldorado CC in Indian Wells and Fairbanks Ranch CC in Rancho Santa Fe. Other 1992 officers: Jack Kaplan, Brentwood CC, vice president; Lowell English, Hacienda GC, secretary; and William Kincannon, Santa Ana CC, treasurer. James Izu of Westlake Village, a member of the Mickey Mouse Club of Burbank, is the first member of an affiliate club--a club not attached to a golf course--to be elected to the board of directors.

Mickey Wright, Jane Bastanchury Booth, Scott Simpson and Norrie West have been elected to the Southern California PGA Junior Hall of Fame. Wright won four U.S. Women’s Opens and four LPGA championships. Booth, an amateur, played on three Curtis Cup and three World Cup teams and was low amateur in the 1971 U.S. Women’s Open. Simpson won two NCAA championships and the U.S. Open in 1987. West was executive chairman of the first 15 Junior World tournaments and has been its tournament director since 1986. Booth’s father, Lou Bastanchury, was an inductee last year.

Norman Klaparda, a member at Riviera, recently played 18 holes at the Durban CC in South Africa to complete his goal of playing every course on Golf magazine’s list of the 100 greatest courses in the world. It took Klaparda, who carries an index of 6.7, seven years to play them all. . . . The sixth annual Ellsworth Vines Invitational for amateurs over 35 will be played Dec. 7-8 at La Quinta Hotel’s Citrus and Mountain courses. Two-man teams will compete over 36 holes. Ellsworth Vines, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, is a former professional tennis and golf champion. . . . Jack Nicklaus and the Angels’ Wally Joyner will play an exhibition round Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. on the Dove Canyon course in Orange County.

Tom Sargent of Yorba Linda CC is the Southern California PGA’s professional of the year and Scott Stubbs of Hacienda GC is the assistant pro of the year. Ron O’Connor, of the SCPGA staff, was voted a lifetime membership at the annual meeting. . . . The Don Drysdale Foundation, a Manhattan Beach charity organization, will hold its fifth annual Hall of Fame pro-am Jan. 3-5 at three Palm Springs area courses. Among the players will be Yogi Berra, George Blanda, Tom Fears, Whitey Ford, Rod Laver, Dennis Ralston, Otto Graham, Al Kaline, Bernie (Boom Boom) Geoffrion and Don Drysdale.