There's never been any mystery as to why people like John Daly. One chapter of his often hilarious autobiography is called You Don't Know Me and in it he interviews himself on various topics, one of which poses the all-important question, McDonald's or Burger King?.

"I think Burger King's got the best burgers," he answers. "Wendy's burgers ain't bad. And I love McDonald's fries and their quarter-pounders are good too. But my favourite burger is the Double-Double, Animal Style, at the In-N-Out chain in California. That's two meat patties, with ketchup and mustard and pickles and onions cooked into the meat. I pitch the top half of the bun to cut down on my carbs."

What's not to like? He hasn't won a tournament since 2004, hasn't had a top 10 since 2005, looks like he ought to have a cardiac expert on speed-dial and yet his were still the biggest crowds over the opening two days of the Australian Masters last week. They'll be the biggest ones at the Australian PGA this week and, if he can move a little promotional work back home around, they'll be the biggest ones at the Australian Open next week too.

He's been on tour for 21 years now, has won over $10m in his lifetime and yet despite his popularity outside the ropes, there are plenty inside them who still figure him for Jed Clampett in Footjoys. Two majors amount to worthless currency in their market.

Money has never bought Daly their acceptance but while in general he'd like to be liked, their cold shoulders have never given him a chill either.

He filled the golf pages of the Aussie newspapers even while missing the cut last week. Stuart Appleby had a pop at the decision to dish him out a sponsors' invite, given that his world ranking these days almost equates to the 747 he flew in on. "I guess he's a walking train wreck," Appleby said, "and unfortunately, people turn their heads to watch the train wreck."

What Appleby was mostly referring to was the incident in North Carolina a few weeks back where Daly spent a night in the cells having been picked up outside a Hooters by the local police. His mugshot ended up all over American TV – complete with prison-issue orange overalls – even though he had committed no crime and hadn't been arrested, just taken into custody so that he could sober up.

Daly is what can most sympathetically be described as a functioning alcoholic. He's had at least three spells in rehab and freely admits to almost drinking himself to death on a couple of occasions in the 1990s. He's had a terrible year on all fronts, with new coach Butch Harmon walking out in frustration after just a week in the job and a disqualification from the Arnold Palmer Invitational coming after he missed his pro-am tee-time. He's in the middle of what will be his fifth divorce, this one with an increasingly messy custody battle attached.

Through it all, his golf has been mostly wretched. His tour card disappeared in 2006 and he was injured all last year despite a MRI being unable to find anything wrong with him. Eventually, stem cell therapy was able to find two hairline fractures in his ribs earlier this year and by the time he healed the year was gone. Unwilling to put himself through Q School, he will be surviving on sponsors' invites for the foreseeable future, his immediate plan being to win a PGA Tour tournament and with it a two-year exemption. Failing that – and it isn't especially likely to happen of course – he'll try his hand at winning a tournament in Europe, maybe get himself a seat on the gravy train to Dubai at the end of the year.

"When you're down, people just keep stepping on you," he said last week. "And it's the ones that are behind me and that love and that keep backing me that are important. They know that I can still go out and win golf tournaments when I'm healthy. It's not like I have anything to prove out here, except to myself. And you can't do it hurt, you know? It's been a very, very trying two years for me. I feel like I've gotten the most of it over me, I've got the bad past behind and gotten the bad people out of my way.

"You can't really have success out here if you don't have good people by your side and I just haven't had that until now. It's a helluva lot better to play healthy than hurt. Good golf takes away a lot of bad negative rumours. Perception is a bad thing in my life because, you know, I did screw up a lot of things in the '90s. A lot of what was said about me this last year are just not true and I think the tour knows that, the people around me know that and my fans know that."

And those fans still turn out for him. In Hong Kong last Sunday, his 62 was the most talked about phenomenon of the day until the thrilling play-off between Rory McIlroy and Lin Wen-tang.

Once he got to Australia, neither Appleby's barb nor the general sniffy attitude of the media there stopped him drawing hundreds more than the rest and justifying both the invite and the heavily-rumoured appearance fee. Yes, he missed the cut but then so did Appleby.

Karma can be a bitch like that. Appleby probably regrets his little snipe now – and if the organisers of the Australian PGA tournament have any mischief in them at all, they'll pair the two of them up together this coming week – but Daly likely won't hold much of a grudge. "Did anybody survive?" was his shrugged response. "I'm still surviving the train wreck... It's just life. We've got to live it and get through it."

Daly is a constant reminder that some folk find more of it to get through than others.

mclerkin@tribune.ie