OK.....this one's for you mangy....

Don't remember the exact year but sometime in the late 90s...…

I was a volunteer marshal on the 18th tee at Cog Hill in Lemont, Illinois for the Motorola Western Open.

John Daly, who had fallen out of contention on a muggy and hot summer Sunday, lumbered up to the tee. The beautiful finishing hole on Dubsdread (course #4) hole was playing its usual 450 yards with some nasty left and right bunkers about 270 yards out. On their second, players needed to careful to stay right as a huge lake loomed in close proximity to the left edge of the green.

A large crowd had gathered at the 18th despite Daly being buried on page 2 of the leaderboard. In this particular season, Big John had embraced a big ol' zero iron as his go to club on long par 4s. Known for often hitting his driver erratically, the zero allowed him to let er rip with his enormous swing usually getting 300 yards plus with good accuracy.

He teed it up, took one practice swing and then crushed it. The ball took an immediate right turn with some pretty nasty spin sending the fairway spotters scrambling westward as the ball appeared to sail out of play. One of the marshalls about 310 yards in the distance waved back to us indicating that they couldn't find the ball.

Daly grumbled and teed up a second. With another monstrous effort, his second (provisional) ball took off in exactly the same slicing arc as the first. This time, we were told that the ball was well out of play coming to rest far right of the fairway and became hung up in a hospitality tent.

JD was now furious. He said a few choice words and angrily took a 3rd ball out of his pocked and tossed it recklessly onto the tee box. He approached it quickly and took a might whack at it. The ball went straight as an arrow easily landing at 310/320 yards right down Broadway. Well......good news/bad news....he finally had a ball in play.....but was laying 5. He launched the zero iron in a shot put motion to his caddy who was standing about 30 feet from him, and left in a huff.

A few minutes after the following twosome teed off and left the area, a grinning marshal pulled up (on his cart) to where we were standing and said......Hey. Get this.....they found Daly's 1st ball off of the tee and he was allowed to play it.....He made par.