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I'm going to be playin' Memphis, been reinstated from the PGA—John Daly, via Twitter, May 26, 5:50 a.m. EDT ¶ As those 11 words, sent from John Daly's computer in the late-morning hours in Kent, England, hurtled through cyberspace last week, Phil Cannon, tournament director of next week's St. Jude Championship in Memphis, was already preparing for the coming storm. ¶ It was Cannon's sponsor's exemption that officially ended Daly's exile from the PGA Tour, a six-month suspension following a spate of incidents in 2008, including a night spent in a North Carolina jail after an evening of drinking. Daly, the prodigal son of professional golf, would soon be walking in Memphis.

Cannon's phones at St. Jude Championship headquarters were beginning to ring off the hook, with folks calling to confirm the reports about Daly's imminent return and, of course, to scoop up tickets for the tournament. "I call them Daly's dailies," Cannon says. "They're the people who buy a daily ticket just to watch him play."

Cannon says he felt no queasiness about giving Daly a precious sponsor's exemption, his off-the-course combustibility notwithstanding. One year during the Memphis tournament, Daly arrived at TPC Southwind with what appeared to be fingernail scratches on both sides of his face. He said Sherrie, his fourth wife, had tried to stab him with a steak knife the night before. Despite that incident and other odd behavior over the years, Cannon prefers to highlight the positive when it comes to Daly and his support of the Memphis Tour stop.

In a year in which the St. Jude Championship lost its title sponsor, Stanford Financial, due to an alleged fraud scandal, Daly provides a crackling story line, whether he wreaks havoc or not. "I don't want to get too hyperbolic," Cannon says, "but there was another Memphian named Elvis Presley whose popularity was also hard to quantify."

Just weighed in at 225, LOST 55 POUNDS!! That's AMAZING!—Daly, via Twitter, May 17, 5:06 a.m. EDT

Like Elvis, Daly has also gone through huge weight swings, starting as the fit and mustachioed ninth alternate who won the 1991 PGA Championship, becoming the pleasantly plump bomber who won the '95 British Open, and ballooning into the obese, sweat-stained golfer who let himself go in the new millennium.

This spring, the pictures beamed across the Atlantic to the U.S. have shown a trimmed-down Daly, thanks to lap-band surgery on his stomach in February. The weight loss (he wants to get to 190 pounds), a new girlfriend (former Hooters promotional director Anna Cladakis), a new swing guru (Phil Mickelson's old coach Rick Smith) and a new habit (Twitter) have given Daly a new sheen.

But what will the Tour be getting when Daly plays in Memphis, attempts to qualify for the U.S. Open and then tees it up on another sponsor's exemption at the Buick Open in late July? Is this a new John Daly?