Photo Of The Day: Celebrating The Life And Work Of John Daly

Every day, SBNation.com will celebrate a random photo series from the past or present, making your morning a little more colorful.

Oh yeah... WHAT’S UP BIG JOHN?

Just an all-around American badass right there. A hero, even. That photo, from the sidelines of the Arkansas-Alabama game, reminded me of Daly earlier this week. We can only hope he rubbed off on Ryan Mallet.

Anyway, in the name of celebrating Daly, let’s go back through the archives this morning. But first, a quick anecdote from a third party:

I was 14 the first time I got falling-down drunk. I was attending summer golf camp at the University of Arkansas. It was 1985, and a preternaturally talented young golfer named John Daly was my camp counselor. This was six years before Daly won the PGA Championship as a rookie. He would also become famous for his drinking, but in 1985 he was still just a big kid, five years older than I was but not especially more mature.

One night he acquired a bottle of Canadian whiskey, and somehow we persuaded three girls from the tennis camp to join us in his dorm room. Not bothering with glassware, we passed the bottle around until it was empty. I remember eating some watermelon Daly had bought. The evening ended when I regurgitated the whiskey and melon onto one of the girls. Daly and another player on the Razorback golf team deposited me into the well of a shower, where I fell into a dead sleep.

That’s from Time Magazine’s John Cloud, and it’s got to be the greatest “first drunk” story of all time. Top five, at the very least. Would you have liked to party with College John Daly? Me too. Anyway, let’s get into the photos. This first one’s pretty great. (Hint: the person we thought was the unhinged mess was not actually the unhinged mess.)

In fact, that’s Big John with his act together, just being awesome. A few years ago, it wasn’t so pretty...

That was at a Hootie and the Blowfish listening party in 2005, which might have been the most depressing party in history. A Hootie listening party in 1995? Awesome. 10 years later? Yeah...

But don’t get confused. John’s a worldly figure. Here he is in Singapore:

One can only imagine the damage John Daly did in Asia. Or Abu Dhabi, for that matter.

That photo simply cannot be topped, but here he is celebrating his victory at the British Open.

They say the sun never sets on a badass. I say it definitely never sets on a badass mullet.

And today, after everything he’s been through over the past two decades, Big John’s still here, having weathered too many storms to count. We joke about him a lot, but the resilience he’s shown over the course of his career has been pretty staggering. How can you not root for John Daly?

He’s the greatest. Thanks to Getty Images for the outstanding photos, and here’s to hoping Big John can steal one last major in the next few years. Just because. A win for John Daly is a win for all of us.