Daly: 'I begged Greg Norman to let me be on the LIV tour'

Many of the LIV Golf signings from the older brigade have been as predictable as they've been dull but the prospect of John Daly signing up would at least be of interest, not that it's going to happen.

Daly, now 56, would love the chance of getting involved which won't surprise too many of us. Speaking to Piers Morgan Uncensored the two-time major champion he admitted that he would lap up the opportunity to play on Greg Norman's tour even if it was to be in a non-playing (of golf) capacity.

“Greg said he’s not doing any more and I’m too old, so... but let me go into entertainment and let my friends do all the concerts and stuff. Playing with Bryson DeChambeau in the Open Championship was an eye-opener because he said: 'It’s the greatest thing on earth. We still play a pro-am – it’s two pros, two amateurs. That’s what it should be anyway, you’re done in four hours and we play for a lot of money which we deserve to play for.'"

The pro-am is all part of the golfing world, it gives the sponsors and their pals the chance to spend some time with the pros in return for parting with large sums of money to boost the prize funds. Not that the pros see it that way given that it can be six hours spent on the course the day before a tournament.

“I begged Greg Norman to let me be on the LIV tour because, you know, we work really hard and I played with Brian Harman in the practice rounds and some other guys in the practice rounds of the British Open and it’s like, we play pro-ams, we get it, OK, that is what is the backbone of a lot of our tournaments.

"As Brian Harman says: 'Give us a box of chocolates for the effort.' I play two to three pro-ams every week on the Champions Tour and, you know, we don’t play for a lot of money on the Champions Tour so I almost feel like, 'OK, I’m not getting a lot out of this, what are we doing?'"

Daly has made more than $10 million in his PGA Tour career and more than $2.1 million on the PGA Tour Champions. The money on the over-50 circuit is generally thought to be pretty exceptional but Daly, unsurprisingly, would like to see his peers even better rewarded.

"We’ve got to get compensated for that (the pro-ams) and the LIV tour has given players that. You know, they play pro-ams, it’s a big party, they play for a lot of money which these guys who are on that tour deserve that money, and I think there’s a lot of other guys that deserve that money, especially this old man!”

As for the accusations of sports washing by the Saudis Daly was equally as forthright.

“It’s unbelievable. The politics is so stupid in this. I could talk about Nike, I could talk about other companies and little eight and 13-year-olds building shoes for Nike. OK, we don’t want to get into that, right? You want to talk about labour laws, we’re talking about golf - guys that are playing golf. It’s an international sport.”