NFL owners began their meetings Monday by overwhelmingly approving a new contract that will ensure labor peace with the players until 2004.

The vote was 29-1, with Wellington Mara of the New York Giants the lone no vote. Mara opposes a provision that extends contract guarantees from eight games to a full 16-game season. Twenty-three votes were needed for approval.

The owners had three items on their morning agenda ratifying the labor agreement, listening to commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s state of the NFL speech and setting a structure for the team that will begin play in Cleveland in 1999.

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The annual debate over instant replay probably will come Tuesday or Wednesday.

Much of the morning was spent discussing the new Browns, who are expected to be an expansion team. The league has authorized George Young, who stepped down as general manager of the Giants after last season to become a league vice president to set up a personnel department for the new team.

It would be in place by this summer even if there is no owner to scout prospective free agents and college players. The contract extension agreed upon last month was approved twice this weekend, first by the executive board of the NFL Players Association, meeting in Hawaii, and on Sunday by the Management Council executive committee.

The agreement gradually increases the amount of money allocated to the players, from 62 percent of total gross revenues to 64 percent. The approval also means the new television contract, which can be renegotiated after five years, is likely to be extended to eight years, bringing in close to $18 billion.

Instant replay was approved by a 4-3 vote by the competition committee. Those opposed were general manager Rich McKay of Tampa Bay, coach Bill Cowher of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati president Mike Brown.

Cowher’s no vote may doom it most coaches like the concept but are at odds over the format. The system recommended by the committee requires coaches to challenge a call before it takes effect.

I’m not sure I like it that way, Tampa Bay coach Tony Dungy said. It almost means you have to have a coach in the booth looking at a monitor just to catch mistakes.

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Daly hacks away to memory of Tin Cup

John Daly shot an 18 while playing 36. Daly had to write 18 on his scorecard after putting six balls into the water while playing the par-5, 543-yard sixth hole Sunday at the Bay Hill Invitational.

Daly was 2-under for the tournament, which featured 36 holes on the final day, when he came to No. 6, a dogleg left with water down the left side.

Driver in the water, 3-wood in the water, 3-wood in the water, 3-wood in the water, 3-wood in the water how many was it, anyway? he said.

After his first drive went in the lake, he moved to the forward tees and tried to cut off even more of the dogleg, a shot of some 300 yards.

He annihilated it. It was right on line, it just didn’t carry, said playing partner Paul Goydos, who had the task of keeping Daly’s card.

So Daly tried it again. And again. And again. After the third ball in the water, the gallery started yelling, Tin Cup, the movie about a driving range owner who has a chance to win the U.S. Open before hitting one ball after another into the pond on the 18th hole.

I still say they made that movie after me, Daly said. Daly finally cleared the water on his seventh shot, but it plugged in the hazard. He took a drop, and his 6-iron into the green landed in the rocks and ricocheted into a bunker.

He blasted out and two-putted for an 18.

I would have bailed out a little sooner, said Tom Watson, who was also in the threesome. It’s both a tragedy and a comedy when you do something like that. One guy in the gallery said, Play it safe.’ He couldn’t stand to see him suffer.

Still, Daly found a silver lining. Progress before perfection,” he said. I got a hell of a lot of practice with my 3-wood.

And Daly did manage to bounce back. He followed his 18 with a birdie 2.