Golf icon John Daly once lost $1,650,000 in just 300 minutes
John Daly's excellent sports results contrast with his peculiar way of life. Not only does he have a diet coke and cigarette diet, but he also once managed to lose $1,650,000 in just five hours.
The number is not wrong, nor is the time frame. The double Major champion himself revealed his less-than-favorable "record" in his autobiographical book "John Daly: My Life In and Out of the Rough," published in 2006.
The incident occurred in 2005, when John Daly lost the World Golf Championship in San Francisco to none other than Tiger Woods. Daly decided to drown the sorrows of his defeat in Las Vegas.
John Daly chose the slot machines at $5,000 a game, but 30 minutes later, he had lost $600,000. The house assigned him a line of credit for the same amount, but he lost that too. The total loss eventually amounted to $1.65 million in 300 minutes.
In his book, John Daly continued the story as follows (via Sports Casting):
"And here’s how my sick mind analyzed the situation. My sponsorship payments would be coming through in January, so I’d be able to pay everything off and get back to even by the beginning of the new year. Everything’s fine. Everything’s OK. No problema. Hell, yes, there’s a problema."
John Daly's history with gambling
The American has a fair few addictions, which are not limited to cigarettes or junk food. John Daly has admitted to having serious drinking problems, which even led him to play the PGA Tour tournaments drunk.
In 2016, Daly talked about his problems with alcohol with For The Win. This was part of what he said:
"I played a lot hungover. I played a few rounds where I was still drunk from the night before. One time [during a PGA Tour event], I played the front nine, drank four Coors Lights at the turn, then shot like four or five under on the back nine and finished seventh on the tournament…those beers released all the pressure."
One addiction led to another, and Daly entered the world of gambling. Sports Casting claimed in 2020 that he was still gambling regularly at the time. Daly himself put his losses as a result of gambling at more than half a hundred million dollars.
In an interview with Graham Bensinger posted on YouTube, Daly claimed that his losses were between $55 million and $57 million over about 16 years. He even said that he had to consult his tax records to come up with the figure.
However, the aforementioned interview was published in 2016, so the amount of Daly's losses due to gambling could very well have increased.