Life lessons from the fairway: John Daly lets loose; a son shares famous dad's wisdom

Montreal Gazette
Saturday, June 10, 2006

By Adam Daifallah

Given the short length of the Canadian golf season, golfers can be forgiven for not wanting to spend time reading golf books in the summer. But when the weather is uncooperative, you could do worse than to fill your day reading some of this year's offerings.
My Life In & Out of the Rough (HarperCollins, 208 pages, $34.95), John Daly's new autobiography, is already on bestseller lists.

Daly, who sprang to instant stardom in 1991 by coming out of nowhere to win the PGA Championship, is best known for his long drives and his inconsistency on the course.

If you thought Daly was erratic off the tee, wait until you learn about his private life.

Everything you ever wanted to know (and probably some things you didn't) about Daly comes out in this memoir. To put it mildly, he's been through a lot.

In these profanity-laced pages Daly lets loose with details on everything from his recurring problems with the bottle, to his various stints in rehab, to his four marriages (the current wife is in prison), to his unorthodox style of play that has won him boatloads of fans in every corner of the globe.

The two-time major winner recounts stories of trashing hotel rooms (and once, his own house), losing millions of dollars gambling, flirting with suicide and his problems with his weight. Daly's admission in the opening pages that "I guess you could say I'm not exactly a poster boy for moderation" is an understatement.

I never really liked Daly. I thought he was embarrassing for the PGA Tour and the game. But this book has made me think twice. It almost has an endearing effect because it is so

real and unpretentious. While Daly enlisted the help of sports writer Glen Waggoner for the effort, the voice on these pages is unquestionably his own, complete with the Southern accent and all. You can almost hear his voice rolling off the pages. What comes through is a man fully aware of past mistakes, but determined to persevere and make the best of things. And he sounds so sincere.

Daly is brutally frank about his shortcomings and at numerous times takes responsibility for his blunders. In fact, he acknowledges that he could just as easily be dead. He contemplated suicide on more than one occasion, and a few years ago, his drunken father came close to shooting him with a pistol. With his drinking under control (although he insists he was never an alcoholic) and finances in decent shape, we are left with the impression that the worst is behind him, even though he isn't having a stellar year on the tour.

At one point in Daly's book, he says he doesn't care to read about golf's traditions or its history. So he may be one of the few golfers around who wouldn't enjoy Claude "Butch" Harmon, Jr.'s The Pro: Lessons About Golf and Life From My Father, Claude Harmon Sr. (Crown Forum, 256 pages, $32.95). Butch, a master teaching professional like his father, Claude Sr., shares his father's life story and his beliefs about how to succeed in golf and life. This is part biography of Claude Sr.; part autobiography of Butch himself; part instructional book and part manual of life wisdom. The result is an absolute gem.

The author, who for a decade was Tiger Woods's swing coach, has accomplished a rare feat: Like Harvey Penick's famous Little Red Book in 1992, he has managed to convey simple, yet concrete instructional tips through story-telling. There are no charts or diagrams or gimmicky five-step programs to a better swing in this book. Each of Harmon's chapters has a theme illustrated by stories. They all finish with a list of what he calls "pearls": various tidbits of wisdom applicable to both golf and life that his father taught him and his brothers. The knowledge Harmon gleaned from his father that he passes on to us will be useful for weekend hackers and championship players alike. This book belongs on every golfer's shelf.

If you're looking for something a little lighter, Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly's novel Shanks for Nothing (Doubleday, 253 pages, $32.95) is for you. A sequel to Reilly's bestselling novel Missing Links, this fictional work of golf adventure is a fun read replete with silliness, off-colour guy humour and some jokes that would go over the heads of those unfamiliar with the game.

Lovers of the old Caddyshack movies will instantly recognize the storyline here, which pits Joe Sixpack-type characters who play at a shoddy local public course called Ponky against The Mayflower, a rich, stuffy country club located right next door.

The protagonist, greeting card writer Ray "Stick" Hart, and his gang of loser golf buddies set out to save Ponky from being paved to become The Mayflower's parking lot. Stick's father, a charter Mayflower member with whom he does not get along, dies. Ray is bequeathed enough money to buy the club and save it from

ruin, but the will states that he can only claim the money if he qualifies for one of golf's four major championships that year.

The main story is how Stick sets out to qualify for the British Open and save Ponky, but interspersed are a handful of smaller sub-plots involving other characters like Dom, a sex-obsessed stud who tries to win over Ponky pro shop staffer Kelly van Edelstein. A lot of ink is spilled on this and other sideshows, which becomes distracting and leads to confusion at times. Overall, though, Reilly deserves credit for writing a book that most of the middle-aged male golfers I know will devour.

And if these three aren't enough, there are at least two more new golf books that look promising. Noah Liberman's The Flat Stick: The History, Romance, and Heartbreak of the Putter (HarperCollins, 220 pages, $32.95), bills itself as an illustrated volume about everything one could possibly want to know about putters and putting: its history, famous putts and more. And any golfer (read: everyone) who has ever spent time wondering if he or she could make it to the big leagues might enjoy Tom Coyne's Paper Tiger (Gotham, 320 pages, $34). Coyne, who excelled in the junior golf ranks, moved to Florida to dedicate a year of his life to improving his game to see if he could compete with the pros. This book chronicles his topsy-turvy journey.

Adam Daifallah is a law student at Université Laval and a former competitive junior golfer.