Golf announcer and former European Tour player, David Feherty, recently did an interview with Rolling Stone and to say the man was candid with the reporter would be a rather large understatement. Feherty, one of the few people on earth who Tiger Woods genuinely enjoys speaking with, opened up about his deep struggles with alcohol and drug abuse and DEAR CHRIST this is not what I expected to read.
A typical day was 30-40 Vicodin and two and a half bottles of whiskey…real whiskey. Whiskey with an ‘e.’ There was cocaine, there was dope. When I think about it now I’m like, “Why am I alive?”
How he’s alive is a damn good question. But with such alarming damage to your body comes a good story or three. When Feherty won the Scottish Open 30 years ago, he woke up two days later next to Led Zeppelin’s road manager.
That particular instance was kind of during the ascent of those problems. I headed into Glasgow that night to a concert and woke up two days later at Gleneagles, which was 150 miles away, and Peter was poking me with a stick like a dead stag. I had half of a train ticket to London that I hadn’t used. So I came to London and got back to Scotland – but I had no idea how. It’s still confusing to this day. Oh, and the Scottish Open trophy is still lost. God only knows where the hell it is.
Unbelievable. That trophy has probably been sold on eBay three times already.
It’s always been pretty apparent that Feherty was likely no stranger to an Irish pub. But did you expect to find out he was once the outrageous rock star of golf? Insane.
Thankfully for himself and for anyone who watches golf, he’s been sober since 2005 after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He got there with the help of his wife and 2-time Masters champion, Tom Watson, who knew without asking — due to his own prior struggles — that Feherty was hurting badly and decided to help him.
“I didn’t know that Tom had a problem at that point … we’re on Prince Edward Island, and Tom [lives in] Kansas City, so I said, ‘How am I going to get to Kansas City?’ And I hear this voice behind me say, ‘I have a G5!’ So I’m getting heckled by Jack Nicklaus, who sent me there with his G5, and I went with Tom and he looked after me for 2 or 3 days and I’ve been sober ever since.”
If you’re gonna get sober, you might as well get there on Jack Nicklaus’ G-fucking-5.
Still, to this very day Feherty struggles with depression, taking an assortment of antidepressants, mood stabilizers and amphetamines that add up to 14 pills a day. But that doesn’t keep him from being fucking hilarious.
He explained that his wife thinks he looks like “a homeless person that just robbed Nordstrom” and said “if they come up with a drug that helps you play golf better, I am going to be so pissed, I looked for that for years.”
God bless this man.
[H/T Rolling Stone]