Drunken Daly Hauled Off to Jail

Things went from bad to worse for John Daly on Wednesday. At the tail-end of a season in which Daly has played mostly miserable golf and gone through a public spat with Butch Harmon, Daly spent the night in jail in Winston-Salem, N.C.:

John Daly, who's won two of golf's four major tournaments, spent the night in jail after police responded to calls for assistance with an intoxicated person at a Hooters Inc. restaurant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Daly, according to reports, had been asked repeatedly by Hooters staff to leave. Then, at some point, he passed out. When police arrived on the scene at 2:17 a.m., paramedics were already there.

Daly "appeared extremely intoxicated and uncooperative,"' police said in their report of the incident. Daly is a "regular"' at Hooters, one of his sponsors, according to the golfer's Web site.

Since the 42-year-old, who was asked to leave the premises by Hooters' personnel, had no transportation, officers took him into custody "out of concern for his level of intoxication,"' police said.

Daly was to be held in the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center for 24 hours; in the words of police, a "24-hour sober up."

Daly's story in recent years has been one of a steady decline that first generated amusement, then concern, and then irrelevance. One can only hope that Daly gets a grip before a final descent into tragedy.

See also:

• John Daly biography
• Gallery: John Daly through the years