John Daly likes to walk up and smack it. He does precisely that on page one of his best-selling autobiography.

I’ve beat up hotel rooms, houses, and cars.

I’ve gambled away a couple of fortunes.

I live on Diet Coke, Marlboro Lights, and the support of my fans. I’ve weighed as much as 290 pounds – and lost as much as 65 in three months.

And I’ve been married four times.

But as his ability grows shakier to smack it in straight lines around the golf course – he’s won once since 1995 – look for Daly to smack it around other arenas that much more. (The San Francisco Chronicle announced his on-course demise just last week. “Take a good, long look at Daly [at the AT&T Pro-Am],” wrote Ron Kroichick, “because eventually – at this rate, fairly soon – he will fade from the scene for good.”)

Daly fans already can turn to his reality show The Daly Planet on Golf TV. He’s looking for someone to make a movie based on his life. Following My Life In & Out of the Rough: The Truth Behind All That Bull**** You Think You Know About Me, which became a New York Times bestseller, he recently published Golf My Own Damn Way: A Real Guy’s Guide to Chopping Ten Strokes Off Your Score, which, to its credit, does what it sets out to do: Help “people who already play the game” make simple, practical improvements. The irony? Daly doesn’t read – “John told me he read a book called The Dangers of Alcohol,” says friend Tom Dreesen, who usually shares a foursome with Daly. “He said, ‘It scared the s*** out of me. So I vowed never to read again.’ ”

The highlights include two intriguing “research projects”:

Go to the range on a day you’re not playing. Starting with your wedges, find out what club you hit 100 yards. Whatever it is, identify it and then hit ten of them. Then find out what club you hit 125 yards. Once you find it, hit ten of them. Then move on to 140, 150, 160, all the way though your bag. In an hour, you ought to be able to establish once and for all – to prove to yourself – how far you hit your clubs.

That just may well turn out to be the most productive hour you’ll ever spend on the range.

The next round you play, leave your driver in the trunk of your car.

Look, we both know that nothing feels better on a golf course than to really nail a driver dead-solid and see that little white ball soar into the sky like a rocket and come rest smack dab in the middle of the fairway about 330 yards from where you’re still holding your follow-through pose. Okay, maybe it’s only 230, or 200, or whatever. You know what I mean.

My question to you is: How often does that happen with your current shot?...

You’ll gain some perspective on how to score better.