Exit "The Wild Thing", enter "The Mild Thing" - John Daly version two has arrived. Few people would have wagered on the ever-colourful, 44-year-old American topping the leaderboard on the first day of the British Open here Thursday, but briefly he did just that with a tremendous six-under par 66.
Years of hard-drinking, junk food, divorces and tantrums seemed to have doomed Daly forever as a championship contender, but all that has changed in the course of a few months.
Taking stock of his increasingly dire situation, the 1995 Open champion here decided to have a gastric band attached to his stomach and since then he has lost weight, given up alcohol and worked hard on his game.
"I'm 44 years old. I've learned a lot," he said.
"I have never run from my mistakes. I've always been honest with you guys (media) and everybody around me.
"You know, it's how you come back, I think I'm on a comeback. I've been hurt for a good three and a half years.
"It makes it very tough to play, get your confidence up when you're working around injuries."
Asked what he thought he should be tagged as now, Daly shot back: "I don't know. 'Mild thing'?"
Daly also stole the spotlight on Thursday for the outrageous dress sense that saw him stride out over the hallowed links of the Old Course in a kaleidoscopic combination of pink shirt, light-blue vest and green and purple Paisley-patterned trousers.
"I didn't design them. These are called the Paiseltines," Daly said of his attire, which has been his trademark for the last year.
"All of these pants, the good thing about them is you get dressed in the dark, any shirt is going to match!"
There was no joke, however, about Daly's golf game on the day when he turned back the clock.
Daly went out in fve-under 31 and he got to seven under through 11. A dropped shot at the 17th Road Hole, when he overhit the green, was the only blemish on his day.
"The way I hit my driver today, I had so many opportunities," he said.
"I could fly a lot of those bunkers and had a lot of wedges in there, and I putted a few out from the green, 30, 40 yards off the green and putted.
"All in all it was just a great, solid ball striking day. I hit some good putts on the back nine that I thought were in and just kind of trickled away from the hole. It was a good, solid round."
What matters for Daly next is to keep the momentum going, and history is not in his favour.
"It would be great," he said when asked if he could be in contention on Sunday.
"You never know what the weather is going to do here. It could be blowing 30 or 40 miles an hour tomorrow and you shoot 1 under and it would feel just as good as shooting 6. It all depends on the weather.
"I just need to come out tomorrow and just try and play the way I did today and hopefully make a few more putts."
Copyright 2010 AFP American Edition
