About eight days after winning the 1991 PGA Championship, John Daly landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The August 19, 1991, issue billed him as “Long Shot: Big hitter John Daly in a big PGA upset.” But if the past was any guide, even that cover moment would have seemed unlikely without the wild, whirlwind week that came before it.

Daly was the ninth alternate in line to play the PGA Championship that year, so his chances of cracking the field were slim at best. Still, Ken Anderson, who kept tabs on the PGA Tour’s alternate list, was all over it. He’d never heard of Daly, never seen him play, but he still dug through the player guide database so he’d know exactly who to pull if Daly got the call. And sure enough, Daly got the call.

First, Mark James withdrew, which opened the door for first alternate Dave Barr. Then Lee Trevino bowed out from exhaustion, and Keith Clearwater got in. And so it went, one domino after another, leaving three players still ahead of Daly before Thursday.

With nothing better to do, Daly headed from Memphis to Indiana anyway. Thirty years after the win, he said Nick Price had rung up to mention that his wife was expecting and that he might withdraw, which could hand Daly a spot. So, he arrived late on Wednesday night that week in 1991 to find a message waiting on the hotel room answering machine: a 1:58 tee time was his for the following afternoon.

There was little time to prepare, so the three alternates ahead of Daly declined the offer. Daly faced the same dilemma. He didn’t even know the course (Crooked Stick Golf Club); he had never seen it or played it, yet it was too good an opportunity to let go of. So, he said yes. The rest was hysteria.

But he still needed someone to carry the bag, and fortune was on his side. Price’s caddie was suddenly out of work, so Daly brought in the late Jeff “Squeaky” Medlin for the week. It turned out to be a memorable stretch for both men. In a Golf Digest interview, Daly recalled that on the second hole of the opening round, Medlin leaned over and said, “Man, you hit it good.”

Considering Price was one of the Tour’s finest ball-strikers, that was no small compliment. Now Daly was in the field and had a caddie, but the big question was, what next? Going into that week, he had made 23 starts and missed 11 cuts. So, naturally, his name was nowhere near the favorites’ conversation as the tournament began.

And then he went ahead and won anyway.

What John Daly did that week was magical.

In the opening round, John Daly teed it up with Bob Lohr and Billy Andrade, but for the full four days, he leaned hard on caddie Jeff Medlin. Squeaky had been at Crooked Stick for four days then, taking the measure of every inch of the 7,295-yard course with almost forensic care. As Andrade put it, “I just remember John asking [Squeaky], ‘Where do I hit it here?’ on every hole.”

The advice clearly did the trick, because Daly opened with a tidy 69 and sat two shots behind leaders Kenny Knox and Ian Woosnam. It was a day no one could forget, and not all for the right reasons. Around noon on the first day, weather warnings went up on the leaderboards, and before long, a fierce storm rolled over Crooked Stick. Play was halted by a siren at 2:14 PM.

Then, less than half an hour later, at 2:40 PM, Thomas Weaver was killed after being struck by lightning. Daly took it hard, aware that Weaver had left behind two young daughters.

“I felt I was almost responsible for him being killed,” Daly said later.

After cashing a $230,000 winner’s check, Daly handed over $30,000 to help pay for Weaver’s daughters’ education. One daughter became a doctor and the other a lawyer. Coming from a small Arkansas town and having very little of his own, Daly’s big-hearted gesture was no small thing.

Meanwhile, on Friday, his 5-under 67 vaulted him to the top of the leaderboard. He shot an eagle and seven birdies and was one shot ahead of veteran Bruce Lietzke. By then, it was clear Daly was cut from a different cloth. He was flying the ball into territory nobody else seemed to visit. He was the longest hitter on Tour, but he was also ranked a shaky 185th in accuracy.

Pete Dye had set Crooked Stick up to punish the long hitters, with bunkers squeezing in at 260 yards and only easing off a bit at 280. Before the tournament, Dye even walked the course with Greg Norman to check whether the danger zones were in the right places. Since the Australian couldn’t carry most of those traps, Dye figured he had nailed it.

Daly, though, was playing a different game altogether. He averaged about ten yards past Norman off the tee and could often add more besides. On doglegs, he’d just take the scenic shortcut and leave himself a short iron in, while everyone else was grinding in with long irons and even woods.

“It’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen anyone hit the ball like that,” said Wayne Grady, the defending PGA Championship winner.

By Saturday’s third round, the crowd was buzzing and completely sold on him. On the 456-yard 4th, he crushed a massive drive, then followed it with an 8-iron that finished just a foot from the cup for birdie. On the 609-yard 5th, even after driving into the rough, he still ended up within 10 yards of the green in two.

His third round wasn’t entirely trouble-free, either. Daly came within a whisker of a two-stroke penalty when Medlin touched the 11th green with the flagstick. That’s a no-no under the rules, which bar players and caddies from touching the green to help gauge a putt’s line. Even so, it would have been moot if the scores had stayed put.

On Sunday, after a double bogey at 17, Daly gave Lietzke a glimmer of hope heading into the water-guarded 18th. But Daly steadied himself, made par, and signed for a 71. He had absolutely feasted on the par 5s, going 12 under, hitting 54 greens in regulation, and, in the process, had turned himself into an improbable PGA Championship winner.

After the win, an elated Daly said, “I can tell you one thing: I’ve done this my way. I don’t have anybody to blame for this win but me, and I love it.”

As Daly would say: grip it, rip it.