Pro golfer John Daly spent a night in jail this past weekend after Winston-Salem police found him drunk outside Hooters restaurant, police said yesterday.
Daly was held early Sunday at the Forsyth County Jail to sober up, Lt. Tyrone Phelps said.
Paramedics went to Hooters, just off Hanes Mall Boulevard, about 1 a.m. on a report that Daly had passed out, Phelps said. They called for police, who arrived to find Daly smelling of alcohol, drunk and unwilling to go to the hospital. "He didn't want to talk to them," Phelps said.
Daly, 42, of East Collierville, Tenn., had been traveling in his tour bus and told police that the other people on the bus did not want him to get back in it. Hooters was closing, so the officers decided to use a state law that allows them, in some cases, to take someone to jail to be held overnight to sober up, Phelps said.
Daly was later released. A friend, Ira Lee Dean, 39, of Chapmansboro, Tenn., was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.
"The friend got a little excited and got out of hand and called the officers names, so he was arrested," Phelps said.
Dean, a songwriter and former member of the country band Trick Pony, was released on an unsecured bond.
His attorney, Chris Clifton, said that Dean "had a friend who was in trouble and was trying to do everything to help him."
The bus was passing through Winston-Salem, and the people onboard decided to stop at the restaurant, Clifton said. The Hooters restaurant chain has been one of Daly's sponsors since 2005.
Daly is a two-time major champion who has not had his PGA Tour card for the last two years. He burst onto the scene in 1991 when he won the PGA Championship. He was the ninth alternate, but got into the tournament and won it.
He has won five times on tour, including the 1995 British Open, but he has not had full playing privileges on the PGA Tour since 2006.
Daly, who has been divorced four times, has been suspended by the tour at least twice.
In March, Daly and his swing coach at the time, Butch Harmon, parted ways after Daly spent time in a Hooters corporate tent at a PGA Tour tournament in Tampa, Fla. Harmon said that Daly was not serious about the game of golf.
"The most important thing in his life is getting drunk," Harmon said.
Daly fired back in July, telling reporters, "I'm eating too much, but I'm not drinking hardly at all, and I never go out."
A spokeswoman for Hooters, Alexis Aleshire, said that Daly was not in Winston-Salem representing the company.
"From what we heard, he was just there to have dinner," Aleshire said.
Daly was given a sponsor's exemption to play in the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro in August, where he surprised many by shooting rounds of 70 and 67 to make the cut. He wound up finishing tied for 50th.
This year on the PGA Tour, playing on sponsor's exemptions, Daly played in 17 tournaments and made just five cuts to win $56,017 to rank 232nd on the money list.
For his career, Daly has made $9,109,268 to rank 89th on the PGA Tour's all-time money list.
■ Dan Galindo can be reached at 727-7377 or at dgalindo@wsjournal.com.
■ Journal reporters John Hinton and John Dell contributed to this article.
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