Golf: Daly's comet lost in space: Dick Taylor on a year in the life of John Daly as he prepares to defend his PGA title

IF YOU can accept that John Daly is 26 going on 16 you can then better understand his life the past 12 months as the US PGA champion. When he rocketed into our consciousness one year ago in what has become the historic Four Days at Crooked Stick, neither he, nor golf, was ready for such a happening.

He arrived at the championship in the dead of night as the eighth reserve, found a bed, but could not sleep as he had a first round to play and a caddie to find. The one advantage to such a hectic start was that he had not heard the world's greatest players describe Crooked Stick, in suburban Indianapolis, as unplayable. Then rain came and made it playable, cooling off hot greens. So Daly, known as 'The Wild One' on the minor league Hogan Tour, took directions from one 'Squeaky' Modlin, a tour caddie, and belted out, quite literally, a 69 to be high on the leader board.

Brought before the press, Daly began describing his round. Those who had preceded him to the interview room were using three-irons and upwards where he was flipping shots into greens. A 300-yarder was standard, and some launches were in the 340 range.

John Daly: 25, hitting golf balls since the age of seven; Missouri and Arkansas amateur champion in the US heartland; single, with travelling girlfriend Bettye Fulford; All-American golfer at the University of Arkansas; native Californian, Arkansas-based most of his life; professional since 1987, played South African Tour, Hogan Tour; tried for his PGA Tour card once and failed.

In the second round he scored 67, was eight under and at 136 the leader. He had 90 per cent of the gallery, all the photographers and all the working press that walks. When he returned 69-71 on the final two days for 276, 12 under and three ahead of Bruce Lietzke, a genuine phenomenon was crowned. Wait till he really learns to play.

Sadly, he was thrust into a twilight zone of which he had no knowledge: millons of dollars available for a kid who thought a four- course meal was a triple hamburger and Coke, and an unrelenting microscope on his life. He was naive to the point of brutal honesty, and what should have been his year of sweet content and riches turned into a rich soap opera.

First, someone in Athens, Georgia, Bettye's home town, blew the whistle on her. She was not 29 and single, as Daly said he had been told, but twice and still-married with children, and 39. He felt betrayed by one he had loved, moved her belongings out of his Memphis home, changed the locks and got on with the tour. In January he found a new companion, a Hollywood starlet, at the Bob Hope Desert Classic.

He also found a summons in his hand: from Mrs White, seeking the odd American reparation known as 'palimony'. The suit was withdrawn without comment and Daly breathed easier and finished third in the Tour Championship over the daunting No 2 Course at Pinehurst, North Carolina.

But that was not the end of it. As he walked from ninth green to 10th tee in his final 1992 Masters practice round he was hit again with a suit, this time seeking child support, since she now claimed she was carrying his child. This, strangely, brought the couple together, and they were wed and a daughter joined the new family.

Was it settle-down time for The Wild One? All hoped so. Stories of trashed motel rooms, deliberately missed cuts, daily rations of a pint or four, died down and domesticity reigned.

He earned dollars 574,782 ( pounds 307,000) on the 1991 tour, 17th on the list; probably another million in appearance fees and another big figure for endorsements. He was set. But so far he has not been a factor in 1992, winning only dollars 154,955 (67th) and leading only the driving-distance statistic, with a 283-yard average, nine ahead of Fred Couples. All big hitters in the past learned to curb such appetites if they wanted to eat.

Yet no matter what he scores he continues to draw huge crowds to practice tees, and to his pairings, as witnessed at Muirfield. His comments after his poor showing there are typical of this man-child's current thought processes, and could have been left unsaid. That he does not have the game for Open courses is a given, but then who does? That Daly will not change his swing for one week was again a Daly silly, as all great players adapt. Never play another Open Championship? Pshaw.

As the late and great Laurie Auchterlonie would tell complaining contestants, usually American, during Opens over the Old Course, 'Ye play every course as ye find it.' John will find Belle Rive, near St Louis, to his liking this week, but there is a consensus that he will become Daly's Comet, brushing our planet once in our lifetime. Unless he listens and learns; learns to tame a backswing that nearly reaches ground level, and has but one plan for every golf course - let it rip. Meanwhile he is a crowd pleaser, a side show to the main event.

Dick Taylor is senior editor of Golf Week Magazine in the United States. .

(Photograph omitted)