JOHN DALY became a folk hero to many golfers when he qualified for the 1991 PGA Championship, after eight other people pulled out, and went on to win it.

That “zero-to-hero” victory propelled the hard-living former University of Arkansas golfer to a second major win at the 1995 British Open at St Andrews.

But, in a new warts-and-all autobiography, Daly admits that he has squandered $50-60 million (£27-32 million) in winnings and sponsorship money at casinos.

“If I don’t get control of my gambling, it’s going to flat-out ruin me,” he writes in My Life In & Out of the Rough, which is due out next week. A larger-than-life figure, Daly is sometimes known as “Long John” for his towering tee shots. He has won the PGA’s Driving Distance Crown a record 11 times.

But he also suffers from powerful drives in his non-golfing life. He has battled a drinking problem, spent two stints in rehab, and gone through three divorces. He was once removed from a British Airways flight for allegedly harassing a flight attendant while drunk. His fourth wife is now in jail for helping to launder money for a drug ring.

Now 40, he says that he lives “on Diet Coke, Marlboro Lights, and the support of my fans” and has written the book in an effort to understand himself. “I’ve taken a lot more control of my life in the last five or six years,” Daly writes. “I’m off those damned medications. I don’t drink JD aniels any more. I don’t beat up on hotel rooms and cars as much. Only gambling remains a problem.”

Daly describes himself as an eternal optimist who always thinks that he is going to hit the perfect shot or win the next jackpot.

When he kicked his drinking habit, a friend warned him that he would one day discover something that he loved as much as alcohol. Everyone around him hoped that it would be practicing golf. It turned out to be slot machines.

“Gambling is the only thing that gets my juices flowing like golf does — or whiskey used to,” he writes. He says that he loves playing slot machines because of the solitude.“It’s just me, by myself, and I’m in total control,” he explains.

By the time of the 1995 British Open, Daly owed almost $4 million to casinos.

“The British Open saved me. Not because of the size of the winner’s purse itself, it was only £125,000, which was like $200,000 back then. But after St Andrews, when you throw in all my bonuses from my sponsors, I took a $1 million-plus haul away from the Old Course,” he says. “All that went to casinos.”

After paying off his gambling debts by the end of 1995, however, he quickly found the cycle started all over again. Last autumn, he earned $750,000 (£410,000) when he came second to Tiger Woods at the World Golf Championships in San Francisco, after three-putting from 15ft on the second play-off hole.

Instead of going home to Arkansas, he drove to Las Vegas and lost $1.65 million in just five hours.

“And here’s how my sick mind analysed the situation,” Daly writes. “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.”

Daly, who broke a long PGA Tour drought by winning the Buick Invitational in February 2004, writes that he wants only two things more from life — to write a book and to make a movie about his life.

Having completed his autobiography, he writes: “Now all I have to do is work hard and win another major, to give my movie a happy ending.”

RISKY BUSINESS

• Wayne Rooney is said to have run up debts of £700,000 with a business partner of his England team-mate Michael Owen betting on sporting events by text message
  
  
• Ashley Revell of London bet everything he had — £74,000 — on one spin of a roulette wheel. He doubled his money.
  
  
• The Australian media mogul Kerry Packer once lost £13.6 million in a three-day Las Vegas binge
  
  
• The 1981 Ashes series was initially disastrous for England. During the third Test a bookmaker offered 500-1 against England. The Australian players Rod Marsh and Dennis Lillee laid a small bet as a joke — and were hugely embarrassed when they collected

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