Dave Hannigan: A comic and tragic David Feherty shoots from the hip

David Feherty was working the Masters and part of the gig entailed doing a late-night wrap-up show with Jim Nantz from Butler Cabin. Between the end of the CBS live broadcast and the taping he started boozing, which is how he ended up getting lost in the darkness of Augusta National and driving his car across the fabled par-3 course. Not quite a tradition unlike any other.

“Sir, have you been drinking?” asked the cop who apprehended him.

“Well, officer,” said Feherty, “if that’s your first question I know why you didn’t make detective.”

After he defeated Ian Baker-Finch and Christy O’Connor Jnr to win the 1986 Scottish Open at Haggs Castle in Glasgow, Feherty partied for 48 hours straight with, amongst others, members of Led Zeppelin. Peter Grant, the band’s legendary manager, finally poked him awake with a stick as he slept by the 16th green, fifty miles down the road in Gleneagles, coated in morning dew, and no longer in possession of the winning trophy. That bauble was never found.

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While recording a television interview in Canada 20 years later, Tom Watson leaned across to him, and said, “You’re not well, are you?” The eight-time Major winner had battled the bottle himself, knew the signs, and wanted to bring him to his regular AA meeting in Kansas City. When Feherty tried to wriggle out of the invitation, Jack Nicklaus intervened, and they flew him there on his private jet. Trying to save him from himself.

The chaotic nature of the lives they lead means alcoholics invariably spin the most entertaining yarns but even the funniest of their narratives are always shot through with a certain sadness and regret. So it is with much of Feherty, an enthralling new biography written by John Feinstein. Pairing Feinstein, author of some of the finest sports books ever, with a consummate storyteller who has led a truly remarkable life inevitably produced something startling. One minute this extraordinary book has tears rolling down your face funny. The next it’s tears rolling down your face poignant, especially searingly honest stuff about Feherty’s son Shey’s 2017 death from an overdose.

“I’ve dealt with depression, with being bipolar for a long time now,” says Feherty of coping with this seismic loss. “It’s been diagnosed, and I take meds that help control it. But there’s part of every day when I’m just sad. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I don’t. But I feel the sadness, and I know it isn’t something where I can just take a pill and start to feel better.”

Tragic. Comic. Antic. This is some tale. An undiagnosed ADD sufferer growing up in Bangor, Co Down, during the Troubles, he dropped out of school, turned pro as a 5-handicapper, and when he won his first tournament, the 1985 Italian Open, sang “Just one cornetto” live on BBC radio to show off his opera training chops. Four more wins on the European Tour and a Ryder Cup appearance later, a high-functioning alcoholic pieced together a fine resume that turned out to be just the preface.

Moving to America in a vain bid to save a disastrous first marriage, he pivoted into television, becoming an on-course commentator whose irreverent wit sounded downright revolutionary amid the staid pageantry of holier-than-thou golf coverage. CBS constantly worried he might disobey the eight pages of rules handed to its pundits when working the Masters each April, a stifling detail that might explain why, in 16 years covering Augusta National, he was inside the storied clubhouse just once.

Despite the bristling of the stuffed shirts, Feherty grew popular enough to sell out theatres doing stand-up shows and one American network tried to turn his life into a sitcom. Eventually they gave him an in-depth interview show that ran for 10 seasons and boasted a stellar guest list that, aside from every major golfer save Tiger Woods, included Larry David, Bill Russell, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Tony Romo, Charles Barkley, and John McEnroe.

Fortunate his broadcasting career took off just as Woods turned golf into appointment television, the pair enjoyed a rather sophomoric friendship, and Feherty confesses to conducting an interview with the sport’s biggest star on the 18th green one Saturday on live television even though he’d just shat himself. The only clue to the noxious circumstances was the golfer standing as far away as was possible while somehow staying in shot during their brief chat.

“I went over there as an Irishman, and came back an American,” says Feherty about a 2007 trip to Iraq that prompted him to become a US citizen and to set up Troops First Foundation, a charity helping wounded soldiers transition back into society. He also went into business making bespoke rifles with John Wayne Walding, a green beret sniper who lost a leg in action. They called the company Five Toes Custom Gunworks because that’s how many Walding had left.

Like his unashamed decision to move to LIV for a ridiculous sum of money, Feherty’s sense of humour isn’t for everyone but his relentless candour with Feinstein is admirable, down to documenting in detail how he takes 13 pills a day to cope with his various mental health issues. In this respect and so many others, this might be the rawest, most compelling book about an Irish sportsperson since Vincent Hogan’s seminal collaboration with Paul McGrath. Heady praise. And it’s deserved.