Maybe this is the way John Daly’s career was destined to end.

Suddenly and without warning. Plenty of confusion, lots of questions but, really, not a whole lot of surprise.

It just seems so fitting. So Daly.

And now, with a rather abrupt retraction on the heels of an even more abrupt “retirement” announcement on live TV, you realize that everything about Daly is this way. Nothing can ever be simple. You will always be guessing. He’s had us doing it for years.

Even when Daly stormed off Torrey Pines on Friday and uttered the words “I’m done” to a producer for his Golf Channel reality show “Being John Daly”, you knew there would be an asterisk. Something else. There always is with this guy.

We root for him because, damnit, we want to see a troubled soul who seems to be down and out, a guy who is like so many of us, just pick himself back off the canvas and buck the odds one more time. Every time he steps up to the tee, you can almost hear the Rocky theme in the background. And yet the chapter always ends with Daly taken away in silver bracelets after having one or ten too many at Hooters, wrapping a fan’s camera around a tree, bringing an NFL coach out of a Hooters hospitality tent to caddy following a rain delay, having a legendary coach give up on him.

Maybe, this time, Daly should have just stayed retired. Chase that career in broadcasting. Or music. Or as a Hooters, uh, hostess. This golf thing just doesn’t seem to be working out anymore. He shot 79-71 at Torrey Pines and, at this stage of his career, he is a lot more 79 and a lot less 71.

The truth – and, yes, it’s even a little sad – is that John Daly has been an insignificant part, almost an afterthought, on the PGA Tour for years. As always with the long hitters, Daly will have that puncher’s chance any given week. It’s a slim chance and not much else. Should Daly decide to call it quits, he’ll be missed not for his game on the course, not the two majors, but for the life and the followers he led off it. JD has always been a poster buy for the blue-collar ham n’ egger, the guys like you and me.

Last summer, John Daly was brought in by tournament organizers to put on a clinic at the Canadian Tour’s Montreal Open, just as he’d done in previous years. I was down in Montreal doing some work at the tournament and you just had an uneasy sense that Daly wasn’t going to show.

That vibe proved right. The night before the clinic, Daly pulled out with what his handlers said was a back injury. Then-defending RBC Canadian Open champion Chez Reavie, who had also been brought in to host a clinic, stayed behind an extra day to fill the void left by Daly. Oh, and for the record, Daly, two days after leaving the Montreal organizers high and dry, was playing the Wyndham Championship, aching back and all.

The Montreal fiasco, like this latest “retirement”, is so John Daly.

You just never know what the heck to expect.