AUGUSTA - John Daly's playing golf today. Not at the Augusta National, where the 81st annual Masters Tournament is happening. Some other course in the area, with a corporate sponsor.
His stuff is parked outside the Augusta Hooters, as has become his practice during Masters Week, and while he and his business associates are tied up for for the moment, the Daly brigade is busily awaiting today’s customers.
“Is John coming?” a few folks asked on their way inside Hooters, where the wait for a table is about an hour.
RELATED: The Masters: Think you know the course?
He’ll be here, is the answer.
Daly’s long list of career highlights span from PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 1991 to PGA Tour Comeback Player in 2004. For the last several years he’s maintained a quirky presence during the Masters Tournament, selling all sorts of merchandise from an RV outside the Hooters.
“The greatest thing for me is when someone comes up and says, ‘My son started playing golf because of you, or I started playing golf because of you’ and all that,” he said during an interview at his rolling headquarters last year.
Running the show today in Daly's temporary absence is his fiancee/handler Anna Cladakis, organizing hats, T-shirts, books and other gear with the efficiency and focus, if not the numbers, of the National grounds crew next door.
"I'm trying to get organized after yesterday's monsoon," Cladakis said, referring to the storms that marched through Georgia like Sherman's army on Wednesday, ripping up some buildings, setting fire to others via lightning strikes, flooding roads and - most pertinently for our purposes here, forcing the nation's most famous golf course to have to close for a time.
It's still pretty windy and chilly today, but at least it's dry. (Here's the forcecast looking ahead).
We’ll check back a little later to see if we can catch up with Daly. If last year’s interview was any guide, it’ll be a fun and freewheeling chitchat.
Here’s a recap from that visit until we’re able to film a new one:
“Come on, girl, ask me some questions!” Daly said, a lit cigarette bobbing from his mouth, when I approached his swag wagon last year. “Want a beer?”
MORE:
About the Author
