How has this great gunslinger been so overlooked? How has he never made it on the most respected and most trustworthy Gunslinging Polls ever known to gunslingingkind?

If we did not bestow this very special Special Award on him, then we may not have been able to continue to receive the prestige of being called the most respected and most trustworthy Gunslinging Polls ever known to gunslingingkind. Fortunately, we are so trustworthy that we have given John Daly this very deserving Special Award before the title of the most respected and most trustworthy Gunslinging Polls ever known to gunslingingkind was even thought of being revoked, by the appropriate licensure awarding authority.

Because while this great gunslinger has been snubbed for far too long, his gunslinging credentials are simply too great to be overlooked forever.

But that wasn’t always case, which is why the John Daly gunslinging story will go down as one of the greatest Cinderella gunslinging stories ever told.

Some would say it is even better than the story of Cinderella itself (especially if you are not a fan of the monarchy and fancy balls).

John Daly was never courted by Prince Charming. He started with humble beginnings as the ninth and final alternate—the last on the standby list—at the 1991 PGA Championship.

Which was in Carmel, Indiana.

But Daly lived in Memphis, where something was in the air in 1991 with the release that early spring of “Walking on Memphis,” a song about overcoming writer’s block and having a spiritual awakening, transformation, or revitalization. The most famous line probably being:

"Tell me are you a Christian child?"

And I said "Ma'am, I am tonight"

Sometimes we don’t hear lyrics correctly. Or sometimes we have divine inspiration to alter lyrics as they are transferred from the singer to our ears. Case in point is that Daly ultimately evidently heard:

"Tell me are you a gunslinger?"

And I said "Ma'am, I am tonight"

Consequently, that August Daly took a gunslinging shot (weak golf pun/foreshadowing intended, in “shot” and the afore-parenthetically-mentioned “fore” in “foreshadowing”) at fate and drove (like one does off the tee in golf) seven hours to Indiana just for the chance that nine players would drop out and he could play in a major.

After eight players dropped out for various reasons, Daly needed one final stroke (weak golf pun attempt intended) of good gunslinging fortune to come his way.

Fortunately, people have sex; even more fortunately, this time it was Nick Price rubbing bellies. Mr. Price had shacked up with his (own) wife nine months earlier and wanted to be there for their first child’s birth.

Daly was in the tournament! But it started soon and he hadn’t even have breakfast yet, an essential prerequisite to gunslinging when specializing, like the Great Gastroenterologists of Old, in gluttonous gunslinging. So he ate a hearty meal at McDonald’s and headed off to the course.

Which he had never even been to before.

And he didn’t have a caddie.

Luckily, as previously mentioned, Nick Price had shacked up with his (own) wife nine months earlier and wanted to be there for their first child’s birth, leaving his caddie to pay the price for Price’s selfishness (weak Nick Price surname puns intended) and jobless for the long championship weekend. Also luckily, that caddie had a good gunslinging nickname—”Squeaky”—and was also good at caddying.

Daly, always known for being jovial and generous (and drinking so many beers that it might as well have been whisky), hired Squeaky.

The rest is gunslinging history, scribed for you here (and other places on the Other Internet, told with through much less of a gunslinger lens). #Inferior

With the good gunslinging advice of Jeff “Squeaky” Medlen, John Daly was not only able to make the cut and compete in the tournament: he actually won the whole thing, while becoming a fan favorite along the way for his gunslinging behavior of high-fiving fans on the course (yes, that was considered gunslinging on the links at that time well Before the Common Gunslinger Era). If José Canseco Capas Jr. walked so Shohei Ohtani could run, which he did (citation: Canseco, José, 2024; Poll, Gunslinger, 2025), John Daly gave high-fives during rounds of golf on the PGA Tour in 1991 so John Daly could drink beers during rounds of golf on the PGA Tour later that decade, which was prudent because he golfed his best when drunk (citation: Daly, John). If you are seeing shades of the Inaugural Most Notable Snubbed Gunslinger Metta Sandiford-Artest (Ron Artest) drinking Hennessy during halftime, then you have a refined Gunslinger palate (for whisky, as you undoubtedly have drank a lot of whisky whilst doing your gunslinger homework by studying these Polls) as well as a refined Gunslinger palette for being artistically able to see all the hues of all the colors in the Gunslinger rainbow, which would make Harry Chapin proud indeed.

The fact that John Daly was able to win a major (and high-five fans along the way) as a longshot deep alternate is actually insane! In doing so, he became the first rookie to win a major since Jerry Pate in 1976, who probably did not eat his pre-major meal at McDonald’s (and who you probably never heard of because he probably was a loser, at least compared to John Daly, who went on to achieve many accomplishments Jerry Pate probably never even dreamed of).

For most among us, parlaying a breakfast at McDonald’s into a major victory would be the greatest accomplishment of our professional lives. But most of us are not professional gunslingers.

In 1995, Daly won a second major: the Open Championship in a four-hole playoff against Constantino Rocca.

But Daly wasn’t finished there.

In 1997, he became the first golfer in PGA Tour history to average 300 yards per drive over the course of the entire year. After a one-year 300-yard-average-drive hiatus, he repeated that gunslinging feat for ten consecutive years (1998 - 2008). You know what they say about a golfer with such long drives, don’t you?

They call him Long John.

That’s not a joke. That’s just the honest-to-goodness gunslinging truth. And fans loved his patented “grip it and rip it” style where he would take little time between shots and slam the ball with his famously long backswing. Other words that have been used to describe his style are “free-spirited,” “no-holds-barred,” “powerful,” and “fearless.” All of these are simply a roundabout way of calling his style gunslinging.

And successful.

In 2014, he hit a tee shot off of a woman’s mouth.

In 2016, he pulled off a one-handed chip trick shot.

In 2020, he hit a barefoot hole-in-one.

In 2022, without shoes on his feet but with a cigarette in his mouth and gunslinging in his heart (an undoubtedly alcohol in his liver), John Daly drove a golf ball over Interstate 76 in Akron, Ohio—an achievement that had never before been accomplished and perhaps finally explaining Dr. Chumley’s curious fascination with Akron.

Also in 2022, also without shoes on his feet but with a cigarette in his mouth, he drove a ball off a beer can; then observantly the noticed the beer was spilling out of the can and chugged it.

In 2025, he starred in Happy Gilmore 2 as Happy’s helpful brother.

In 2026, he earned the special Special Award of as the Most Notable Snubbed Gunslinger.