In signing up John Daly to come to these shores again this summer, Golf Australia has proved itself no better than the circus spruiker with a loud hailer shouting: roll up, roll up, come see the Amazing Bearded Lady, or Lionel the Lion-Faced Man, or the world's smallest person, General Tom Thumb.

Daly is now golf's very own freak show, a player who excites a perverse fascination not because of his once-sublime golf game but because, as a sad, overweight walrus of a sportsman battling various alcohol, caffeine and nicotine addictions, he is likely to erupt into a major tantrum at any given moment.

And at New South Wales GC in December, he'll again be egged on by the crowds until he explodes into a rage or racks up a quadruple bogey after losing three drives out of bounds. They'll be waiting for him to throw a club into a lake, crack open a stubby of his favourite beer Crown Lager on the second hole, drag on a cigarette, hit drives 350 metres (and even find the fairway with one or two of them), abuse a tournament official and then, on Sunday when he's no chance of winning (and after he's lost a poultice at Star City Casino the previous night), race around the course in two hours as he hurries to get the first flight back to the States. Roll up, roll up.

His recruitment is a cheap publicity stunt, nothing more, and it was last year when he was brought down by Australian tournament officials to play three events. And, guess what, he missed the cut in all three. That's what happens when your star turn is ranked No.444 in the world. But Daly smashed a fan's camera up against a tree at Royal Sydney and, boy, did that generate some publicity. Fifteen seconds on the nightly news bulletins? What a PR coup.

Seriously, can't the marketing wizz-kids at these organisations come up with something better than the tired, recycled formula of re-signing John Daly when no-one else will come? Is that the extent of their creative, left-field thinking - going for the Lowest Common Denominator? Why not get Kyle and Jackie O to play in the pro-am while they're at it? And see if Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse want to round out the foursome?

Golf Australia sent out a press release last week announcing their coup. Daly will return to the Open at New South Wales Golf Club in Sydney from 3-6 December and, it said, "expects to be back near his best after a year of transformation". I wonder if, by "transformation", GA meant Daly's lap-band surgery in February, a procedure which has taken 40kgs off his ample frame.

As for being back near his best, Daly shot a first-round 78 in the PGA Championship earlier this month before pulling out of the tournament with a back complaint. So, promising signs there for the Australian promoters. Not only is Daly horribly out of form, he's also nursing a long-standing back injury.

"I am looking forward to returning to play the 2009 Australian Open and am particularly excited about playing the course at La Perouse for the first time. I have heard so many great things about the course," Daly said in a press release written by someone at IMG. It went on: "Long John" Daly won the US PGA Championship in 1991 and the British Open in 1995 and remains one of world sport's great characters and most popular players."

One of the sport's great characters? Yeah, so is Happy Gilmore.

It was PT Barnum, one of the great circus entrepreneurs and a pioneer of the freak show as entertainment, who famously said: ‘Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.'

It's a dictum that clearly has some traction in at Golf Australia. And the sad thing is that you and I, as taxpayers, will help fund this absurdity.

Daly is not a well man. He needs help. He was recently reduced to selling some of his own, signed memorabilia from a trailer outside Augusta National GC during this year's Masters tournament. Not so long ago, he would have drawn a huge gallery while playing inside the ropes - such as when finishing third behind Bernhard Langer in 1993, for example - but now he is reduced to flogging T-shirts out in a car park on Washington Rd. What a pitifully sad decline for a fundamentally decent man.

Here's The Wild Thing's career by the numbers: two Majors, four wives, $50million (approximately) blown in bets, booze and broads, two PGA Tour suspensions, several arrests, two "sabbaticals" to sort out his life. And now, thanks to Golf Australia and IMG, one more lifeline.