Wild Daly crashes and burns

Carnoustie is no stranger to heartache down the closing stretch. But not even this brute of a

course could have seen anything quite like John Daly's staggering collapse yesterday afternoon.

At 4pm, the one known as

Wild Thing was leading

The Open, having reached

the 11th hole in just 39

strokes — a wonderful fiveunder

par.

Scroll down to read more:

A matter of 90 minutes

later, Daly, who — in the

latest episode of personal

turmoil — last month

claimed his fourth wife had

attacked him with a knife, had thrown away an agonising

eight shots.

It was

car-crash entertainment,

playing to our worst rubberneck

tendencies.

At

times just watching felt like

intruding on private grief.

How different it all

seemed early on, as the former

Open champion built

on a solid early start with

consecutive birdies at

holes five and six.

Better still, he always carried

the threat of doing

something spectacular.

Often forgotten because of

his prodigious length,

Daly's short game was the

key to his 1995 triumph.

A birdie on the 10th was

followed with an incredible

eagle on the 383-yard, parfour

11th — Daly holing out

with his second shot from

the middle of the fairway.

Now at the top of the

leaderboard, the ever-popular,

chain-smoking, hardliving,

41-year-old, serial

divorcee must have been

beginning to think of himself

as a serious contender

to lift the Claret Jug, as he

had done at St Andrews.

Alas, a double-bogey six

on the 12th dropped him

back down the pecking

order at three-under par.

Not too bad, with a par

three on the next steadying

the ship. Then, disaster. A

triple-bogey eight on the

14th hole saw all of his hard

work come crashing to the

ground.

Over possibly the most

demanding final four holes

on the planet, he probably

did rather well to card

bogey, bogey, par, bogey.

But that all contributed to

eight dropped shots in six

holes.

Not even the warm ovation

of an appreciative

crowd surrounding the

final green could lighten

his mood.