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The world of professional golf has never really boasted any players that could be accurately compared to Happy Gilmore (although Will Zalatoris does bear an uncanny resemblance to his scrawny caddy).
With that said, it’s pretty easy to draw more than a few parallels between Adam Sandler’s character and John Daly, the iconic golfer who took the world by storm after bursting on the scene in the 1990s.
Daly may not have been able to routinely drive the green of a par-4 with ease, but he boasted some incredible distance off the tee in his prime and harnessed it to win the PGA Championship in 1991 and The British Open in 1995.
He was also an everyman and a bit of an outsider who bucked plenty of traditions associated with the country club crowd.
The flamboyant outfits he routinely dons on the course match an equally colorful personality linked to a lifestyle that largely revolves around consuming an impressive amount of booze and Diet Coke, smoking cigarettes, and frequenting Hooters and similarly low-brow dining establishments.
There are plenty of stories out there that sum up the mythos surrounding Daly (which will reportedly be chronicled in an upcoming movie where the golfer will be portrayed by Jonah Hill).
However, it’s hard to think of any tales that perfectly capture the essence of John Daly better than one involving a practice round where he lived up to his reputation to a truly incredible degree.
Remembering the time John Daly crushed an absurd amount of Diet Coke, cigarettes, and M&M’S while playing golf
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The anecdote in question comes courtesy of Will Brinson, a CBS Sports reporter who decided to spend the day following Daly for 18 holes during a practice round ahead of the Wyndham Championship in 2008.
That event was held a year before Daly opted to get lap-band surgery in order to take some pounds off of his famously sizeable frame and more than a decade prior to the bladder cancer diagnosis that forced him to reevaluate the variety of vices he’s spent decades indulging in.
On that particular day, Daly turned to a trio of substances to keep himself fueled on the course: cigarettes, Diet Coke, and Peanut M&Ms.
The nature of practice rounds means golfers aren’t usually too worried about how many strokes they manage to rack up when everything is said and done.
However, Brison was incredibly invested in keeping a different kind of scorecard while meticulously keeping track of everything Daly put in his mouth, and, well, it was a lot.
The final tally of literally everything he put into his body over a full 18 holes:
21 cigs
12 Diet Cokes
6 packs of Peanut M&M’s
0.0 ounces of water— Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) May 19, 2022
The fact that Daly didn’t consume any water isn’t necessarily a huge shock when you consider he did throw back a dozen Diet Cokes, but the fact that he managed to make his way through more than 20 darts is pretty impressive when you consider that averages out to more than one per hole.
What a legend.