The Loop

John Daly just had his first real John Daly moment on the PGA Tour Champions

May 26, 2016

Well, that didn't take long.

In just his eighth career round on the PGA Tour Champions, John Daly had his first blowup hole. Playing No. 16 at Harbor Shores in the first round of the Senior PGA Championship, Daly found the water with his tee shot. Then found a dry part of the hazard with his third. He hacked another ball into the water on his fifth shot and wound up taking a nine on the par 4.

Here, the coverage picks it up from Daly's fourth shot:

That capped a wild five-hole stretch in which Daly went birdie-bogey-birdie-bogey-quintuple bogey to tumble down near the bottom of the leader board on Day 1. Daly is paired with Bernhard Langer, who is attempting to become the first player to win all five PGA Tour Champions majors. Rocco Mediate grabbed the early lead with a 62 that tied the lowest score ever in a senior major.

Daly, of course, has a history of high scores. His nine is just half of the 18 he carded on the par-5 sixth hole at Bay Hill in 1998, a PGA Tour record (maybe record is the wrong word). Two years ago, he shot a personal-worst 90 in the second round of the Valspar Championship, and just last year, he made a 10 on Whistling Straits' par-3 seventh hole during the second round of the PGA Championship. That resulted in him tossing his club into Lake Michigan -- where a kid on a boat retrieved it.

There's been a lot of hype around Daly joining the senior tour since he turned 50 last month. He finished T-17 in his debut at the Insperity Invitational and T-15 at last week's Regions Tradition. And this week started so promising:

OK, so we're not sure if he had an actual Big Gulp from 7-Eleven or just a big soda from McDonald's. Either way, it's funny. A nine, however -- even from John Daly -- isn't.