few constituted, but he didn’t have to. Sober, he says, for almost three years, Daly is not at all reluctant to talk about the bad old days, when the beer never stopped flowing, when he drove at breakneck speeds sometimes 130-140 miles an hour, but not through towns, he said. I wasn’t that crazy.
July 25, 1995
Daly still has his demons, and lately he’s had migraine headaches, a problem his doctors say is a result of too much caffeine. His consumption of sweets as a substitute for alcohol also is a concern. He’s a chain smoker who said Monday morning he still craves a beer almost every day. He just says no, and he also has help.
Although he has never formally attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he often talks to former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Thomas Henderson, a recovering cocaine addict Daly met in January 1993 when Henderson spoke at the Sierra Tucson rehabilitation center in Arizona. Two months ago in Atlanta, he went back to Greg Rita, his caddie in 1992-93 and the man who carried Curtis Strange’s bag for both his U.S. Open titles.
And for most of the past two years, he’s also been with Paulette, his third wife. She is a former model he met at the Bob Hope Classic and married in January in Las Vegas. The couple recently had a girl, her first child, his second, and he made a point in his victory speech Sunday to credit his wife for much of his turnaround.
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It’s not me, he deserves all the credit, she said Sunday night. I just try to be there to do everything I can for him. He’s worked so hard on his game, on not giving up, the patience, everything, and this is the perfect payoff. He also drinks a gallon of Diet Coke and as much chocolate as he can stomach, but we’re working on that.
If I ever get an urge (to drink), it doesn’t matter if I’m down or up, I always want it, Daly said Monday. But I have people who help me. Golf makes me want to drink more because it’s so stressful.
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