Minus a beer belly and a PGA Tour card, a clear-eyed John Daly tries again to get back on top

Slimmed down and clear-eyed, John Daly tries again

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Don’t look for a glass-smashing, hotel room-trashing John Daly in the golfer’s new reality show, premiering next week. He can’t even drink beer any more.

Down more than 100 pounds after lap-band surgery shrunk his stomach and restricted his diet, Daly is slimmer, trimmer and sober as he tries to mount yet another comeback.

The first episode of “Being John Daly,” airs Tuesday on the Golf Channel, shows Daly meeting with his bariatric surgeon, undergoing surgery for astigmatism in one eye, playing guitar for friends and carefully folding his obnoxiously loud pants while packing for a tournament.

He also writes letter after letter, seeking any PGA Tour exemption he can get this year.

“We didn’t want a train wreck,” said Tom Stathakes, a senior vice president at Golf Channel. “I think that people know he’s had a drinking issue, people know he’s been married a lot.

“I think we wanted to show a little grittier side, that this guy’s a human being, and that he’s trying real hard. And I think the country loves a comeback story.”

Daly’s career took off in 1991 when he won the PGA Championship as the ninth alternate and he later won the British Open. Since then, he’s faced a series of ups and downs. In 2008, Daly received a suspended fine from the PGA of Australia at the Australian Open after taking a spectator’s camera and throwing it against a tree. He also served a six-month suspension for various off-course incidents.

The Golf Channel is comparing Daly’s quest to the plot of “The Wrestler,” where Mickey Rourke plays an aging professional wrestler giving it one more shot in the ring. But unlike Rourke’s Randy “The Ram” Robinson, Daly is aiming for a more successful ending.

“I’m happy the way I’m hitting it, I’m just not happy the way I’m scoring. It’s frustrating,” said Daly, who no longer has his PGA card. Earlier this month he made his first cut in Mexico, before shooting 81 in the last round.

Another problem? Getting used to his slimmed-down stomach.

“I don’t have anywhere to put my elbows when I putt now,” he said. “That’s the problem. I used to be able to rest my right elbow right perfectly on my right fat part of my stomach when I putted, and now I can’t do that.”

A camera crew began following Daly last summer and is still filming him, Stathakes said. The channel plans an eight-part series that will wrap up in April.

It’s not anywhere near the first time Daly has aired his private life. In his 2006 book, “My Life in and out of the Rough,” Daly wrote that he gambled away between $50 million and $60 million, and that he owed $4 million to casinos until he won the 1995 British Open, which allowed him to pay off the debt. He named one of his children after a rehab center in Arizona, and said he was once disqualified from a junior event after officials found whiskey in his bag.

On the Net:

The Golf Channel: www.thegolfchannel.com

John Daly: www.johndaly.com