Golf : John Daly once described himself as a Wal-Mart kind of guy, the player who attracted a NASCAR type of crowd.Reports

To you and I that's the fan that shops in the two-euro store and goes badger baiting at weekends. Daly is a PGA nightmare and simultaneously one of golf's saviours, his tragi-comic history of problematic marriages, gambling and drinking binges winning him more fans than his two Major wins could ever have attracted. Daly has been a story of carefree recklessness that puts him in a club with the Paul Gascoignes, Ronnie O'Sullivans and Alex Higginses of the world, yet he brings to the game an easy affability.

The combination of flair and imperfection has traditionally been excused. Daly's excesses are no exception.

"It's part of life," he says. "I think a lot of the media has been living in my past. If I live in the past, there's no sense in me getting out of the bed. So I live in the future. The past sells but I don't read it.

"Everybody's made mistakes. I've never been in Kobe Bryant's shoes (the reference to the US basketball player accused of rape). My stuff has been nowhere near to other stuff that has been going on that's been criminal. I haven't done any of that so . . . I keep moving on."

In Ireland yesterday, ostensibly to promote the new golf course he is co-designing with Irish Golf Design's Mel Flanagan near Blarney, Daly has begun a new chapter. He surveyed the land two miles from the town and hit balls into a virgin meadow that, late next year, will take the shape of a 35-million development and championship course.

But this is no high-end, executive playground.

"When I grew up I got to play because I waded in the ponds," he says. "I sold the club half the balls and they let me use the other half to practise. I learned to play the game on a baseball field. I'd chip to first base, second base, third. Flop shots at the pitcher's mound. I'd cut to the right field, try hit a straight shot to centre field, hook left, and for home runs I'd hit it over the fence. That was neat."

His first dip into the design world was at Wicked Stick, South of Myrtle Beach, where well placed "lion tees" test even the longest of hitters. But Daly is also golf's ecumenicist.

"I want to bring the game to everybody," he says. "I heard something about Troon that nobody can play the golf course until they are 18 years of age. That makes me kind of sad. I want to strive at home to do more public courses. In the States they say they put so much into junior golf. Let's build a golf course for juniors. Let it be only their golf course. Something like that or that it's affordable and people can play."

Looking for a Ryder Cup place and embarking on the Blarney venture in only his second design project, Daly is hoping 2004 will be pivotal for his career.

In February he birdied the first hole of a play-off to capture the Buick Invitational for his first PGA Tour victory since the British Open in 1995.

But at Troon Daly arrived with a knotted back after a bad flight, his lack of quality practice ensuring he missed the cut.

"Winning the Buick tells me 'hey, I can still win'," he says. "It was a wonderful feeling, a very strong field. It helped a lot. I'd won tournaments. I'd won the BMW, a few others, but not to win at home - it sucks. It was getting very frustrating."

Blarney can now prepare itself for the lion tees. But as ever, Daly is as much about touch as renting space in the sky for his drives.

Since his Texan College coach told him he'd never make it on the pro ranks and Daly stuck his middle digit in his face before going on to win the USPGA for his first tour win, he has continued to stomp on tradition. A self-proclaimed redneck, John Patrick Daly may even have some Blarney in him too.