PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- While stuck in traffic on my way to the TPC Sawgrass early Wednesday afternoon I caught a few minutes of the local ESPN Radio broadcast. One of the hosts asked the guest, a local golf broadcaster, who he thought the fans would miss more at The Players Championship this week: John Daly or Tiger Woods?

Neither of the tour's biggest names--biggest in one sense for Woods, another for Daly--is here this week, but both generally have large galleries and will be missed. Woods, of course, is rehabilitating his left knee after having surgery after the Masters and will not be playing at the TPC Sawgrass for the first time since he turned pro. Daly, on the other hand, is not at the Players because he's not playing well enough. And if the recent video of Daly playing without shirt and shoes is any indication, he's not really missing the PGA Tour.

Anyway, I took the question to 20 members of the gallery hanging around the grassy knoll next to the 17th hole as the caddies played their annual closest-to-the-pin competition Wednesday afternoon, and, although the sample is small, these fans miss Daly more. (Although, with full disclosure, the sample was skewed. Seven of the 13 who voted for Daly were holding cups of beer in various stages of capacity, including five, um, gentlemen, who shouted Daly loud enough to be heard in Jacksonville proper, some 20 miles away.)

So, yes, the Players gets underway tomorrow, without Daly and without Woods, but with just about every other member of the top 100 on the World Ranking. What they'll find at Sawgrass is a course that is fast and firm with greens running at 13 (13!) on the Stimpmeter. The temperatures Wednesday afternoon reached the upper 80s, and similar highs are expected the entire week.

"I don't anticipate the scores to be too good, to be honest," said Masters champ Trevor Immelman. "Right now the speed [of the greens] is perfect. It's the firmness that's going to be tough to handle if the breeze picks up."

Phil Mickelson won at 11 under a year ago. Don't be surprised if the winner is in single digits to par this week. Which is what the tour wanted when it moved the tournament from its traditional March slot to the second week in May last year. It didn't want to go on without Woods, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have.

--John Antonini

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Without question, the happiest face around this Players Championship belongs to Greg Rita, a popular veteran caddie who showed up from his nearby home to visit many friends on the PGA Tour.

Rita, 52, hadn't been at a regular event for a year, because he had been working for Scott Hoch on the Champions Tour. Then in September, Rita collapsed and was later diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Surgery was performed Nov. 7, and he's endured it all since--radiation, chemotherapy, seizures, pneumonia, spinal tap.

"But this is the greatest therapy of all," said Rita, whose presence at the course brought things to a screeching halt as players, caddies and tour types dropped whatever they were doing to greet him with smiles and hugs.

Although Rita wears a scar around his head and has dropped some weight, he looked like a man who is up for the fight against cancer.

"I'm going to will this thing away," said Rita, who caddied for Curtis Strange's consecutive U.S. Open victories in 1988 and 1989 and was on the bag when John Daly won the 1995 British Open.

Besides his appearance at the Players, Rita got to hang out with many of his buddies a couple evenings ago when Paul Fusco, Steve Flesch's caddie, and wife Pam had some of the boys over to their house not far from where Rita and wife Kelley reside.

"A great night," said Greg, who undergoes physical rehab almost daily because, as he says, "my body has been torn up." Rita anxiously awaits his next MRI in June--"I pray it's clean"--and takes 40 pills a day, but he doesn't require any medicine to retain a goal he set when doctors delivered the bad news.

"Our son Nicolas is 3," said Rita, a serious Boston Red Sox fan. "When he turns 5, I'm taking him to Fenway Park."

--Bob Verdi

ORLANDO, FLA. -- John Daly missed his 8:40 a.m. pro-am tee time Wednesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lodge. PGA Tour media official Joel Schuchmann said  the tour is investigating what caused Daly to miss his time and will determine later today if he will be eligible to play in the tournament.

Failing to show up for a PGA Tour pro-am causes a player to be ineligible to compete in the tournament unless there is an excuse for extenuating circumstances.

Daly received a sponsor's exemption to compete at Bay Hill, hoping to revive a lackluster season. He has missed three cuts, withdrawn once and finished T-60 in the  Mayakoba Classic.

On Tuesday, instructor Butch Harmon, who had been trying to help Daly over the last few weeks, told the Associated Press he was not going to work with Daly anymore because of the golfer's lack of commitment. "My whole goal for him was he's got to show me golf is the most important thing in his life," Harmon said. "And the most important thing in his life is getting drunk."

Daly's mindset, Harmon said, was much different from that of world-class players. "All the guys I work with are working their [tails] off," Harmon told the AP. "John didn't have it. I like the kid, but he's got to get his head on straight. The partying and other shenanigans, if that's the way he wants to be, I don't choose to be a part of it."

Asked in a press conference about Daly Wednesday, Phil Mickelson said, "It's just not my role to talk about it or get involved in it. I wish him well. I hope things get better. I think we all do."

Update 03/12/2008: Daly has been ruled ineligible for the tournament and is not in the Arnold Palmer Invitational field.

--Bill Fields

(Photo: Marc Feldman/Getty Images)

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- John Daly is inimitable, which, most would agree, is surely a good thing. One of him is sufficient. But whatever one feels about him, he's difficult to ignore, and not simply because of his growing girth.

After shooting 69 in the first round of the Northern Trust Open Thursday, he spoke of the flu that has bothered him the last couple of days and how he was grateful to have swapped pro-am times with Phil Mickelson the day before, "because an hour earlier for me, I could catch the Willie Nelson concert last night."

A Willie Nelson concert would seem an odd elixir for flu. But this is John Daly's world.

"Me and my caddie both got the flu," Daly said. "The last two days have been brutal."

A decent round is the kind of medicine his golf game needed. This marked only the second time in 11 rounds this year that Daly has bettered 70. "It's nice to finally get off to a decent start," he said. "I made a good putt on one and made a really good birdie on three and then [another] on five. You get off to a start like that, and you feel like you can feed off it for the rest of the day."

Daly said he put a new shaft in his putter, one a half-inch longer. "Butch [Harmon, his instructor] wants me to shorten my stroke, so I added some length. I figure it makes it a lot easier to do that."

-- John Strege

John Daly hasn't gotten much love lately. The Angry Golfer has given him the business for railing against the PGA Tour's new cut policy. And last week he withdrew from the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic with a rib injury he says he originally incurred at last year's Honda Classic when he tried to stop his swing because a spectator took his photo. Daly confirmed he is considering a lawsuit against the event's insurance carrier--even though he is asking Honda tournament director Ken Kennerly for an exemption in 2008. We began to feel sorry for big lug, so we searched the web for some Daly dedication and we found it in this blog by Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski. Somebody still loves ya, Big John.

John Daly flew overnight from Hawaii to California, then drove to Las Vegas for his first session with Butch Harmon. "If he [does] all the things I ask him to do, he'll win this year," Harmon said.

Most of the work will be between Daly's ears, but Harmon did get Daly to tighten the backswing on his wedge shots and get more extension on his follow-through with the longer clubs. "Ball-striking wise, he's tremendous," Daly said after arriving early for the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

Daly has no sponsor on his shirt and no exempt status. He also said he has avoided alcohol for a week and didn't visit any casinos during his Vegas stay. "Times are tough," he said. "Only one guy could get me there, and that's Butchie."

--Tim Rosaforte

This article is taken from the Jan. 18 issue of Golf World Magazine

Who needs Tiger Woods when you have John Daly and Kid Rock? John Niyo of the Detroit News details how Kid Rock -- a Michigan native whose real name is Robert Ritchie -- and his friend J.D. stole the show at the Buick Open.

Sunday's biggest celebrity actually rode in a golf cart. That would be Kid Rock, who followed John Daly -- his pal and weeklong houseguest -- all afternoon in a mini-convoy, flanked by state troopers and a swarm of autograph seekers. Daly already was the top draw in this field, but with Mr. Ritchie driving the tour bus -- a beer in one hand, a stogie in the other -- things got a little crazy Sunday.

When Daly and playing partner, Fred Funk -- how's that for an odd couple? -- finally arrived at the 17th, the fans started singing, en masse, "We got the Funk!" With Kid Rock leading the drunken cheers from the balcony -- they went nuts when Daly made his birdie.

On the next hole, after Daly found the tree line with another errant drive on No. 18 -- he hit eight of 28 fairways on the weekend -- it was pretty obvious where everyone's attention was centered. The folks at the ninth green had their backs turned on the final pairing of the day -- Jesper Parnevik and Tom Pernice Jr. -- and were watching the circus go by on the 18th.

And after Daly had finished at the last, someone in the grandstand yelled, "Hey, Johnny! You wanna beer?" He turned, smiled and nodded yes. Hey, what did you expect? Sunday, he was the life of the party

Rock says he has been friends with Daly for seven years, since the latter went to one of his concerts in Memphis and bought $4,000 in merchandise.

Incidentally, it's not the first time Kid Rock has been linked to golf this year. Earlier this year, he helped a high school girls golf team bounce back after six sets of clubs were stolen from their coach's car.

-- Craig Bestrom