Is John Daly Osama bin Laden or just a golfer with a drinking problem?

The big guy is getting bashed so much by golf writers, you’d think he was a child-molesting terrorist sleeping with their wives.

Tod Leonard of the San Diego Union-Tribune calls him “ridiculously out of shape and grossly overweight” and a “big, fat snowball.”

Rick Morrissey of Chicago Sports.com calls him a “mess,” “disaster in progress” “out of control rocket tumbling toward earth” and a “goofy, boozing, chain-smoking wild child.”

Tom Kott of the Washington Post calls Daly a “buffoon” and “bloated and old.”

I’m getting a little tired of these sanctimonious hypocrites hitting the guy when he’s down. They were all part of the myth-making machine when he was on top of the world, when they jumped on that bandwagon.

Now that he’s having some obvious, serious problems, they’re vicious carnivores. That’s easy to be behind a computer keyboard. I’ve seen the type: fawning over Daly in personal interviews, ripping him in print from a safe distance.

Daly has been hailed because his prodigious talent was wed to an everyman image. I got news for you: Everyman has his problems.

I don’t think Daly is going to change his life because of the sage advice of golf writers, many of whom are the first to belly up to the bar.

It’s too much to ask for compassion, I guess. These guys will be the first to canonize St. John again when he quits the booze.

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