Following John Daly’s round on Friday should have come with a disclaimer.
Warning: Seasickness possible with prolonged viewing.
Daly’s name bounced up and down the leaderboard throughout his 4 1/2 -hour tour of Waialae Country Club before landing just above the cut line, giving him a weekend tee time at the Sony Open in Hawaii.
Along the way to signing for a 3-over-par 73, Daly carded an eagle, three birdies, three bogeys, a double- and a triple-bogey and pivotal par saves on the final two holes to leave him at 1 under for the tournament.
Long noted for his length off the tee, it was Daly’s putting that kept him in the field. He hit just five of 14 fairways and seven greens in regulation. But he needed only 22 putts, draining birdie attempts of more than 48 and 32 feet and knocking in his eagle from 42 feet on No. 18.
"Today’s the first time I think I ever felt like Tiger Woods putting," Daly said on his way back to the locker room to get treatment on a sore elbow. "The thing about him is he does that every day. A lot of guys do that every day and I haven’t done it in a long, long time."
His 22nd putt was among his shortest, but the 5-footer for par on No. 9, turned out to be the difference in keeping Daly — the 1991 PGA Championship and 1995 Open Championship winner — among the 79 who made the cut.
"I just hit such a bad second shot in there, I shouldn’t have made (it) that hard. I should have a putt for birdie from there, not par," Daly said. "There was a little pressure, it was nice to make it."
Daly began the day at 4 under after shooting a 66 on Thursday, his lowest score at Waialae since the opening round of the 2001 tournament. He opened by drawing a loud ovation from the crowd with his 48-foot birdie on No. 10 to climb into the top 10.
He gave back four strokes with bogeys on the 14th and 15th holes and a double-bogey on 16.
But he countered with a 32-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th hole and his eagle from the fringe on No. 18 to make the turn with a deceivingly nondescript even-par 35 on his first nine holes.
Even some of his pars were adventurous, none more so than on the eighth hole.
He found the water on both the second and third holes to set up a bogey and a triple before rallying with a birdie on No. 6 to get back to 1 under.
Daly’s tee shot on No. 8 sliced wildly to the right, bounced a couple of times, then rolled under a car parked on the other side of the cart path.
Even after being granted relief from the white Toyota, there was still a tree directly ahead to contend with. His approach clipped a branch but had enough to land in the fairway and run to about 6 yards from the hole.
"I was just trying to get it over the tree and I knew if I got it, it was going to have overspin on it and it was going to roll about 20 yards, so I was fortunate there," Daly said.
His second shot on the ninth also caught a tree on the left side of the fairway, but he scrambled for his par to survive the cut for the second straight year at Sony.
"I love it, this course is such a challenge for me," said Daly, who had a 79 followed by a 67 on the weekend last year. "I think it’s the hardest shortest golf course in the world. You hit a tee ball and think it’s perfect; the next thing you know you’re in the first cut of rough and you’ve got nothing."
