Ken Jones: Daly's unpredictability a rare attraction for hungry fans

In an era of automated golf, concentrated coaching, sports psychologists, fitness regimes and diet sheets, John Daly is his own man. By any definition of the term, Daly is no athlete. At least four stone overweight, heavy-footed, he plods around the course in a cloud of tobacco smoke. The impression you get is that Daly wasn't born but constructed, that he was swung into this world on a crane. He is a monument to junk food and the brewing industry. Daly is a one off, a natural.

According to video analysis, Daly's swing moves through 32 feet. It starts somewhere between his knees and navel on the back swing and appears to go around three or four times before it hits the ball. Sometimes Daly seems to spin around twice, like a propeller. When he makes perfect contact, the ball goes screaming out of there almost into orbit and comes down glowing. When Daly miscues you need a pack of hounds to find his ball. When people see where some of his drives land, they hang around expecting King Kong to emerge from the woods.

Last Sunday, I stayed up later than is my habit to follow Daly's progress in the final round of the Buick International at Torrey Pines, California. It turned out to be one of those experiences that seldom come around at my time in this sporting life. The role of impartial observer sits easily with the passing years, however I found myself committed to Daly's cause.

From the thunderous support he received from the galleries I clearly wasn't alone in this. I was right behind Daly; wanted him to win which he did by seeing off the talented young British player Luke Donald and fellow-American Chris Riley at the first play-off hole to record his first PGA tour victory for almost 10 years. Sweeter than his two major championships, a tearful Daly described it as his greatest ever "because of all I've been through, the ups and downs of my life".

To this ageing mind, the explanation for Daly's appeal is quite simple. Over and above the tussles with alcohol and gambling, the busted marriages, it is boldness. The blessing of soft hands that enabled Daly to play a 100ft bunker shot that finished just four inches from the cup at Torrey Pines, placing insurmountable pressure on Donald and Riley, who both missed from six feet, was preceded by a typical hammer blow. Faced by a long carry to the green, a distance beyond that of his rivals, Daly reached for a three wood and let rip.

Many of today's tournament players appear to be stumbling about in a fog because their 20-20 vision is sharply focused on a single problem in life, the golf swing. Thus, in technique, one player looks very much like another. Idiosyncratic movement is rare. With the aid of technology enormously high standards are achieved but risk-takers are rare.

Greg Norman employed this as a theme last summer during The Open Championship at Sandwich. Bemoaning the disappearance of charismatic golfers, he said, "Young players today look very much the same. They are so concerned about projecting a professional image that they fail to show their personalities. Seve Ballesteros was great to watch because you never knew what to expect. You don't see a Craig Stadler [a winner last week on the Senior tour] out there any more, hardly any characters."

Daly is the exception. He throws hooks at the course, never flinches. Naturally, shots, many shots, have got away in this kind of toe-to-toe exchange, but Daly has always shrugged, teed up another ball - and hit it just as hard. He has never crept around a golf course in his life. He has never run around tinkering with his swing, or begging an explanation for a bad round. When the course knocks him down, he gets up swinging. He's gone home all beat up - but so was the course.

Last week, Daly looked back on his remarkable success in the 1991 USPGA Championship when, as ninth alternate in the field, he drove eight hours through the night to make his tee time. "The call didn't come until midnight and I took it from there," he said. "No practice, just got out there and played." On his first appearance in The Open, at Muirfield in 1992, he stood outside the clubhouse declaring that predicted high winds would take his ball into the next county.

At Loch Lomond last summer, Daly was followed by larger galleries than any other golfer in the field, including Ernie Els, whose swing by contrast is a thing of beauty. In that tournament, peeved by the denial of a free drop, Daly barely addressed his ball before sending it to within three feet of the pin. The crowd roared. He was their boy.

The crowd roared at Torrey Pines mainly because Daly is different. You can glance across the whole spectrum of sport and find few, if any like him. An irritant to some, a hero to others, he is a born risk-taker. After last week's victory, one that sent him soaring from 299th to 85th in the world rankings, you could almost hear him say, "I haven't ever pretended to be anything else."