Desperation comes in many forms but you can usually guarantee the demon drink will be involved somewhere. Take John Daly, who was last seen down the street from Augusta National selling T-shirts and who will today be seen trying to break par on the opening day of the Spanish Open, the latest comeback in a long line of comebacks for the former Open champion.
If he was a character in a horror film – and there are some people who seem to think Daly is exactly that – then you could write this off as just another unwanted sequel in the life of golf's very own Freddy Krueger, or at least you could if you were the kind of prissy hypocrite who believes the American has nothing left to offer but an irresistible opportunity to prove golf is the last bastion of decorum in professional sport.
Alas for Daly, and alas for the sport, there are plenty of prissy hypocrites around in the royal and ancient game and some of them are in positions of power, which explains, at least in part, why he now finds himself in dire straits, professionally and financially.
Not that the player himself is an innocent in his own sorry demise. By his own admission, he gambled away somewhere in the region of £15m, and he has been treated for alcoholism on several occasions, most recently in the aftermath of a drunken night in North Carolina which ended with him being locked up until he was sober.
Daly's problem, clearly, is an addictive personality, coupled with his inability to resist his worst impulses. Does this make him an inherently bad person, or does it make him an innocent victim of a terrible disease? This is a complex question for medical professionals, although clearly not for the PGA Tour in the United States, which responded to Daly's 24-hour incarceration in North Carolina by banning him from its events for six months. "Our job is to maintain the image of the sport," explained the tour's commissioner, Tim Finchem.
In fairness to the PGA Tour, it has welcomed back Daly several times through the years after his various scrapes and stints in rehab. For this it deserves credit, but also quizzing: what was the difference this time? And if the answer is that even sympathy and understanding has its limits, then there is another question – why should there be any limit on sympathy and understanding shown to Daly? After all, he has done more damage to himself than to golf, unlike, say, a former major champion in years past who was known to his peers as a notorious cheat but who entered his dotage as a much-revered figure within the game.
More recently, television has been able to eavesdrop on players mid-round – a welcome development, no doubt, but one that has introduced the viewing public to a wide selection of barrack-room language.
What is worse for the image of professional golf: the sights and sounds of leading players cursing aloud on live TV on a regular basis, or a two-paragraph report on Daly being huckled off to the cells after another hard night on the town? This is one for the photo-finish equipment, perhaps, although not in the eyes of golf's etiquette police, who have decided that Daly's pariah status is now irreversible.
Oh that we were all blessed with the moral certitude to make such judgments, that we were all so eminently qualified to decide when Daly – an alcoholic, with all the weaknesses and vulnerabilities this implies – is no longer worthy of our leniency.
The truth, of course, is that no one is qualified to make such judgments, just as everyone has weaknesses and vulnerabilities – even the PGA Tour which, according to reports this week, is considering overturning its long-standing ban on taking sponsorship money from alcohol companies, as well as loosening its rules on doing deals with casinos. Apparently, a policy reversal could result in a £30m windfall.
Developments are awaited, not least one presumes by Daly, who will surely see the irony in finding himself no longer alone in the world of professional golf in finding the attractions of alcohol and gambling irresistible.
Frequent exposure over the years to the outpourings of American talk radio is enough to inure anyone to the worst excesses of the genre, but it did nothing to quell the nausea felt listening to the LBC presenter James O'Brien attempting to disown his own characterisation of Frank Lampard as "weak" and "scum" during the pair's now famous on-air exchange.
"I didn't call you scum. I was asking questions," said O'Brien, who had earlier spent 30 minutes assassinating the Chelsea player's character on the basis of a newspaper "interview" with his former girlfriend that had been obtained by deception.
Lampard might have lost the head – many would have – but instead set about exposing O'Brien's sophistry, making the presenter seem small, and small-minded, in the process. No doubt he regrets making the call to LBC, not least because it temporarily lifted O'Brien out of his well-deserved obscurity, but he should he proud. He was a credit to himself and his family, living proof in fact that professional footballers aren't as unctuous and self-obsessed as they are often made out to be. Unlike professional radio loudmouths.
Even in his least impressive moments, Howard Webb continues to impress. "It was a mistake, but we make these decisions honestly," the referee said of his decision to award Manchester United a penalty against Tottenham Hotspur. "But show me a man who's never made a mistake and I'll show you a man who's done nothing."
As mea culpas go, that is about as comprehensive as it gets, although this will come as no comfort to Harry Redknapp, who watched his team subsequently washed away in the United tide, and Rafa Benítez, whose hopes of winning the league were probably extinguished as a result. But as they curse their luck, or more likely United's good luck, both managers can surely find it within themselves to acknowledge Webb could have chosen silence over self-flagellation, career preservation over public ridicule. He chose not to, and for that he deserves respect.
The seven new "positive" results obtained in the re-testing of athletes' samples from last year's Olympics brings the total number of doping cases in Beijing to 16. Given that almost 5,000 samples were taken at the Games that is, depending on your level of cynicism, either an astonishingly heartening number or a number that will see some revision in due course. With the samples being placed in storage for eight years to allow for further re-testing should new detection methods be developed, I would bet my life – or at least collection of Beijing Olympics memorabilia – the latter will prove to be the case.
Believe in the power of Twitter. Stewart Cink, possibly the dullest man in professional golf (quite an achievement), is now a certifiable cult figure, having accumulated 110,000 "followers". Sample tweet: "Still made flight on time. Good thing I came early to airport. :)"