John Daly matches best opening round of career at Pebble Beach National Pro-Am

It feels like 1996 with Tiger Woods out of the top 60 in the world rankings and John Daly back in the hunt at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Daly opened his week on the Monterey Peninsula playing Pebble Beach with a bogey-free opening round of 65. He’s in the clubhouse at 7-under and just one off the early pace set by J.B. Holmes and Justin Hicks.

After the round, Daly said that “It’s been a long time since I played that well” to start a tournament. The score matched his best-ever opening round on the PGA Tour.

As usual, he hammered the ball mostly down the middle of the fairway, averaging 322 yards off the tee. The scoring conditions were perfect on what was an unusually hot day at Pebble. The wind was down and Daly held on to avoid the blowup hole. He finished the day by draining a 15-footer on the par-5 18th for a closing birdie.

Daly hasn’t done much on the Tour in over a decade -- his last win came at the 2004 Buick Invitational. But his record at this event is especially grisly. He’s played this tournament 11 times and made the cut just once, all the way back in 1991. While he may have a terrible history playing the actual golf at this tournament, let’s not forget that it was at Pebble just last year that he was the subject of one of American history’s greatest portraits.

Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images

It will be a minor miracle if Daly stays this close to the top of the leaderboard, but one can dream. His amateur partner this week is ESPN’s Herm Edwards and they’ll play Friday at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course. On Saturday, they rotate to Spyglass Hill, which is playing the toughest of the three courses.

Daly doesn’t have full PGA Tour status and is playing on a Past Champion exemption. Of course, it can all come undone with Daly at any minute, but having him in the hunt for the weekend would be a nice boost and a much more fun story to follow than the crumbling game of Tiger Woods. Here’s hoping John and Little John will be around and in the hunt on Sunday at Pebble.