Despite Changes, Results Are the Same For John Daly

John Daly spent the first half of the year in Europe, playing tournaments on that tour while he waited out his PGA Tour-sanctioned six-month suspension. He returned to the States at the St. Jude Classic two weeks ago, and relatively speaking, played well.

Nothing spectacular, but he made the cut. Given how last season unfolded -- it started with Butch Harmon dumping him a few months after they started working together, and it ended with a bucket of hot wings and an orange jumpsuit -- it was a welcome change.

But Golf Digest's John Strege makes an interesting point about the new-and-improved John Daly: despite the physical and mental changes, the results aren't much different from '08, perhaps the most forgettable year in a career littered with them.

Daly on Friday missed the cut again on the European PGA Tour, this time by three strokes at the BMW International Open. That's four missed cuts in eight European Tour starts on the '09 schedule. By way of comparison, in 2008, when his career was bottoming out, Daly also made the cut in 50 percent of his European Tour starts (three of six).

In other words, it's less a comeback than more of the same.

Strege adds that "the next three weeks should be telling about where [Daly's] at in his attempted comeback," because Daly is scheduled to play the French Open, the Scottish Open and the Open Championship.

Where you finish on the leaderboard isn't the only measure of progress, but when you're playing for your tour card (among other things), there isn't much time for reinvention. Tiger Woods basically sacrificed his 1998 season to revamp his swing. He didn't see on-course results until midway through '99, but unlike Daly, he wasn't facing a catalog of off-course distractions.

So, right, who knows how this works out. I'm just hoping for something other than the predictable Daly/Hooters/drunk tank scenario we've been subjected to for most of this decade.