Randy birdies of the fairways

Tyla Peakes: Now I know why some players take so long to complete a round of golf. According to one who knows - the former wife of a top golfer - the men are not only perfecting their game, but also busy making dates or having sex out there.

I kid you not. Sherrie Daly, the fourth wife of professional ace John Daly, has lifted the lid on the seedy side of the sport, saying that prostitutes and strippers stalk the fairways and greens to lure the top players.

And she claims that at one course in Memphis, US, the players received oral sex from a woman camped at the 16th hole. She said the men had to fork out $300 and the woman would take them into the bushes and "do it for them right there".

Sherrie, who spares no details in a new book, Teed Off: My Life as a Player's Wife on the PGA Tour, said women prowled the courses to invite the players to strip clubs and to arrange dates. The players would write their phone numbers on golf balls they were asked to autograph.

For one who has always thought of golf as a bit of a bore, this is quite a revelation. I thought it was all about men hitting a little ball from one tiny hole to another - and that sex was the furthest thing from their minds. Now I know they get up to much more than that.

It was the revelations about Tiger Woods that first piqued my interest. I was surprised to discover that he wasn't like a robot and was made of real flesh and blood. And he was jolly sexy to boot.

Tiger's bed-hopping seemed like a bit of fun and games, but Sherrie's book has uncovered a nastier side of the professional players' circuit. She not only tells of the sexual high jinks, but also details the abuse she suffered during her nine-year marriage.

She recounts how her husband had sided with a group of strippers when she got involved in an argument with them at a charity event. Instead of supporting his heavily pregnant wife, Daly allegedly threw a beer bottle at her, then hit her on the back of her head and left her by the side of the road.

She got revenge after finding a photograph of one of his lovers naked. She distributed a cropped picture of the woman's private parts with a note saying: "This is the vagina of the woman I just found in bed with my husband."

She claims Daly, a gambler and alcoholic, once lost $1.6-million on a trip to Las Vegas.

She also tells how he smashed the windows of his Porsche and urinated on a wall in their Arkansas home in front of his wife and mother because he didn't like the colour it had been painted.

She warns women that being married to a professional athlete "is not what you think - there's a huge price to pay".

"Sometimes they're really good parents or dads or husbands - but when they're bad, they're just so bad, and so it's not worth it."

Her observation is backed by the growing number of scandals affecting sports stars around the globe.

Top of the pile must be British football stars. Barely a week passes without one making headlines for having an affair, hiring hookers or throwing orgies. They even steal each other's partners!

South Africa is no different. You may think our sports heroes are better behaved, but let's have a look at some of the tales that have emerged in recent years.

First of all, there's Joost van der Westhuizen. His public image as one of the country's most popular rugby stars was destroyed when a raunchy video tape emerged. It showed him having sex with a woman who was not his wife and snorting a white powder. The scandal ended his marriage to Amor Vittone.

Former Bafana Bafana and Manchester United star Quinton Fortune was sued for divorce by his wife after she returned to Cape Town from Britain. A beauty therapist, she claimed the footballer had been having a string of affairs. He must have learnt a thing or two from his fellow players in England.

But probably the most notorious South African player is Jabu Mahlangu, formerly known as Jabu Pule. One of his most scandalous incidents took place when he ran off with a 16-year-old Soweto girl at a time when he was engaged to the mother of his 15-month-old child.

Of our other sportsmen, cricketer Herschelle Gibbs definitely rates a mention. There's no doubting his credentials as a womaniser - he said so himself. In his autobiography, he dedicated a chapter, "The Good Times", to two things: women and booze. His escapades reached a peak during the 1997/8 tour of Australia, and he admitted to smoking dagga in the Caribbean that landed him in hot water.

With all this evidence floating around, I'm beginning to think that marrying a sportsman may not be the wisest thing in the world. That's a lesson an American actress called Rosa Blasi says she learnt the hard way.

By her own admission, she is addicted to athletes. But dating them only brought her misery, and she details her love dramas in a book aptly titled Jock Itch.

After falling for a host of handsome sportsmen who let her down, she married a football player. But that went down the tubes almost immediately after he slept with one of her best friends on their wedding night.

How's that for a love rat? Blasi says she will never date an athlete again.

I'm not surprised. Any girl who marries a sports star needs to have a well-devised game plan up her sleeve. If she can get him to keep his togs on, she's the one who deserves a winner's medal.