Everyone would enjoy seeing John Daly turn his life and career around (in that order), and he says he's taken positive steps on both fronts.

At this point, it's probably better to withhold judgment on his turning his life around. Give him credit for losing weight, though do so with a caveat; the lap band surgery on which he relied for his weight loss is a reversible procedure. A benefit to the lap band surgery is that it doesn't allow for much, if any, alcohol consumption. Again, the surgery is reversible. Here's hoping for the best for Daly.

As for his career, the evidence remains scant that he is on the cusp of a resurrection, notwithstanding a tie for second in the BMW Italian Open. He missed the cut in four of eight European Tour starts in 2009, and his best finish outside of Italy was a tie for 27th at the British Open.

In four PGA Tour starts since his suspension was lifted, he missed the cut in two of them and tied for 59th in the other.

More damaging to his new-man narrative (barring any post-round claim of injury), Daly shot an 88 in the second round Friday, a round that included a quintuple-bogey, a quadruple-bogey, a triple-bogey and a double-bogey. This after reports, this one from Geoff Shackelford, that in Thursday's round he at times played as though he had lost interest.

In the midst of it all, we learn that he has agreed to do a new reality show on the Golf Channel, this one with less turbulence. "I'm more laid back,"he told the Associated Press this week. "It won't have the hustle and bustle as the last show."

Better reserve judgment on that, too.

The reality is that seeing less of him would be far better than seeing more of him these days, until he has proven definitively that he has ditched his demons for good. A 51 on his back nine on Friday indicates that they're still hanging around.

-- John Strege

(Photo by Getty Images)

John Daly made a quintuple-bogey 10 on the par-5 first hole Friday (his 10th hole) in the second round of the Buick Open.

ShotTracker on pgatour.com shows that he hit his drive "314 yards to unknown." It apparently was out of bounds. He hit his third down the tree line and it, too, apparently was out of bounds. He hit his fifth shot from the tee to the left rough, his sixth to the left rough, his seventh to the right intermediate rough, 78 feet from the hole and then took three to hole out from there, the last of his strokes a 12-foot putt to save 10.

UPDATE: He bogeyed the third hole and triple-bogeyed the fourth to go 10-over par for his round through 13 holes.

UPDATE II: He quadruple-bogeyed the eighth hole (his 17th) to go 13-over par for his round.

UPDATE III: A double-bogey at his last hole finished a round of 88 that included 51 strokes on his back nine.

-- John Strege

More international opportunities might be on the horizon for the Champions Tour.

Golf World has learned that tour officials are exploring the viability of a tournament in Dubai, perhaps as early as next year, though there is no timetable. The idea is to provide a second overseas event scheduled either before or after a new event slated to debut in 2010 in South Korea.

The PGA Tour announced in June a multi-year agreement to take the Champions Tour to Asia for the first time with a tournament at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, near Seoul. That tournament is likely to be held in September.

--Dave Shedloski

Think again. Woods, after an opening-round 71 at the Buick Open put him in jeopardy of missing the cut for the second tournament in a row, opened his round Friday birdie-birdie-eagle, the latter coming on the par-4 12th hole. He's jumped from a tie for 95th to a tie for 16th.

Incidentally, the last time Woods missed consecutive cuts in PGA Tour events was 1994, when he went 0 for 3 as a 19-year-old amateur.

UPDATE: Woods birdied his fourth hole, drove the green at his fifth hole, the par-4 14th, and had a two-putt birdie. He is now six-under par through five holes and in a tie for fifth.

FYI, his career low round is 61, which he's shot three times, most recently in this same tournament in 2005.

-- John Strege

Crooked Stick Golf Club is playing up to 7,316 yards for the U.S. Senior Open, longer than it played for the PGA Championship when John Daly won it in 1991. Then it played as much as 7,295 yards, making it the longest course in the history of the PGA Championship.

UPDATE: Greg Norman, in his news conference following the first round of the Senior Open, said he's hitting the same irons into greens that he did in the '91 PGA Championship. "I'm hitting the ball farther on this golf course today than what I was in '91,"he said. "I'm carrying the 14th hole without a problem, the big chop dogleg to the left, driving farther down on the par 5s than I did in '91. That's got a lot to do with technology, obviously. From pure technology we picked up some yardage. The same clubs I hit in '91 I'm hitting now into the greens, and there is, what, 20 years separation? My clubhead speed isn't as fast as what it was in '91, so technology has made up the gap."

-- John Strege

Each has contributed to the Koreans' growing influence on the LPGA, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute.

"First and foremost, fathers played a pivotal role by encouraging their daughters to start golf at an early age," SERI researcher Min-hoon Lee told the Korea Times. "The so-called golf daddies also made all-out efforts to support their daughters full-time.

"The players themselves also have virtues of an unparalleled work ethic as well as self-restraint, which seem to have something to do with the country's Confucian tradition."

The Koreans tend to focus on golf to the exclusion of everything else, according to Lee, who said, "They are workhorses who pay attention only to golf."

Koreans have won six times on the LPGA this year, including three of the last four.

-- John Strege

LYTHAM ST. ANNES, ENGLAND - One of the smartest things the LPGA has done in the past decade is elevate the Women's British Open to major championship status. Thursday's first round at Royal Lytham and St. Annes screamed that message loudly. Take a great links course, add in a dash of weather - in this case wind in excess of 20 mph - and there is no better test of the skill and mental discipline needed to be a champion. There are also few things as entertaining as watching great players forced to think anew their approach to the game. No shot can be played by rote. What had been your target on a blind tee shot on one day will provide totally useless information the next if the direction of the wind has changed.

Among the great courses in the Open Championship rota, for both the men and the women, none surpasses Royal Lytham. With its devious and ubiquitous bunkering, Lytham is simply one of the best tests of golf anywhere. Flat spots on the fairways are as rare as sunny days have been lately in northwest England and often a ball that appears to be safely past a bunker will begin a circuitous backward route that winds up right back in the little devil.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about the Women's British is not that it only became a major in 2001, but that it only came into being in 1976. Then again, it is not all that surprising when you remember that the tradition of women's golf in Britain in on the amateur level. The first Women's British Open was played at Fulford and was won by Jenny Lee-Smith, an amateur who was a former Curtis Cup player. Vivien Saunders and Gwen Brandom, two of a handful of pros in the event, put up 200 pounds of their own money as the professional prize money.

To show how far the tournament has come, when Gwen Saunders won the second Women's British at Lindrick in 1977 it was on a match of cards with Mary Everard after they finished tied at 306. The winner's share was 210 pounds. There wasn't even an Open in 1983, but when it retuned in 1984 at Woburn with a sponsor - Hitachi - it began to produce an impressive group of winners.

Ayako Okamoto won in '84, Betsy King at Moor Park in '85 and Laura Davies at Royal Birkdale in '86. The tournament was sponsored by Weetabix, a British breakfast food, when it was elevated to major status in 2001, and is now under the domain of Ricoh, a Japan-based technology company - a long way from when players competed for their own money.

-- Ron Sirak

Say this for the PGA of America: It isn't shy in exposing its own course, Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, to major championships. The PGA is taking the Senior PGA Championship there in 2011 and the PGA Championship there in 2014, it is expected to announce today.

The Louisville Courier-Journal obtained a copy of a letter sent by the PGA's championship director Ben Rubin to a "local official." In it, Rubin wrote regarding a news conference scheduled for today: "the PGA will announce the 2011 Senior PGA championship and the 2014 PGA Championship (are) coming to Valhalla Golf Club. ... PGA President Jim Remy, PGA CEO Joe Steranka and several other PGA officials and special guests will be in attendance. ..."

Valhalla hosted the PGA Championship in 1996 and 2000, the Senior PGA Championship in 2004 and the Ryder Cup in 2008.

UPDATE: It's official.

-- John Strege

Beau Hossler Jr.of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., is 14, just finished eighth grade, stands no taller than a pitching wedge, hits his driver all of 240, and next month will be playing in the U.S. Amateur at Southern Hills Counry Club in Tulsa, Okla.

Hossler, whose handicap index is plus-1.6, tied for second in a U.S. Amateur Sectional Qualifier at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, then won a playoff to secure one of three amateur births. He missed by only three months of becoming the youngest ever to qualify for the Amateur (Ryoto Ito was 14 years, one month, 13 days when he qualified in 2004; Hossler was 14 years, four months).

"IIt will be easy to spot Beau Jr. in Tulsa," Randy Youngman writes in the Orange County Register. "His dad says he'll be the 5-foot-3, 125-pound youngster who hits it about 240-250 yards off the tee and then hits 5-wood approaches into most of the greens, as he did Monday."

Driver, 5-wood into many of the par-4s and he beats 74 players in a 75-man Amateur qualifier.

The only flaw in this remarkable story was made by the headline writer, who invoked the seemingly obligatory phrase used to describe any young golfer of note: "the next Tiger Woods."

-- John Strege