SEVILLE, Spain (PA) -- Former British Open champion John Daly insists his drinking is not out of control and vowed: "I'll be back."

Daly is in the field for the Spanish Open on the European Tour this week, as part of a stellar field that also includes Darren Clarke, Colin Montgomerie, Charl Schwartzel, Niclas Fasth and Miguel Angel Jimenez.

The 42-year-old American, in Europe for the next two weeks trying to end a slump that has seen him crash to 595th in the world, also revealed that he had received an apology from Butch Harmon over comments made by his former coach earlier this season.

Harmon stopped working with Daly, without a top-10 finish for three years, saying: "The most important thing in his life is getting drunk."

That followed an incident when Daly spent time during a rain delay in a hospitality tent and then resumed play with the coach of the local NFL football team carrying his bag.

Daly, who is playing in the Spanish Open in Seville and then next week's Italian Open in Milan, said that happened because his regular caddie had a neck problem.

"Butch didn't have his facts straight. We've spoken since and he has apologized to me," Daly said. "He said he didn't realize and he felt bad about it. I told him I'd lost a K-Mart deal -- that was going to be big with shirts hopefully going into 1,400 stores - and that he'd cost me quite a bit of money with the stuff that he said.

"My marketability went down. It was just rumors, rumors, rumors that just weren't true and Butch seemed to believe them without talking to me," he added. "The coach was great for the tournament. I shot 1 over for those six holes, which was better than I was doing.

"I am fine. Yeah, there was drinking involved, but that does not mean I am drinking," he explained. "The assumption my whole life has been that no matter where I go I end up not drinking every night, but I am not.

"I will turn it on when I am home with my buddies -- who wouldn't? -- but at tournaments I hardly ever drink, if at all," he said. "That's the way it's been for a quite a while with me. The way the media come up with all these rumors has been pretty sad, but what can you do?

"The people around me know I am doing the right things," he explained. "The hard work will pay off pretty soon -- I will be back and I want the fans to know that. I will be back."

By that he means winning again. His last victory was the 2004 Buick Invitational on the PGA TOUR. A torn stomach muscle has not helped, but in terms of his golf it is his putting that Daly feels has been letting him down badly.

"It has to come around," he said. "I've put so much effort into it and now I've just got to go out and freewheel with it somehow."

Daly's decline has been such that he does not even have a PGA TOUR card anymore. He relies mostly on invitations and, enjoying travel as he says he does, he was happy to accept two to Europe as well.

Also in the field this week is Colin Montgomerie, fresh off his honeymoon and back to business for what he calls "a new start" as he resumes his bid to keep his Ryder Cup place.

Montgomerie is now outside the top 30 in the Ryder Cup standings after a season that so far has fallen way short of expectations raised by his World Cup triumph alongside Marc Warren in November.

He did finish sixth in Qatar and then beat Jim Furyk and Charles Howell in the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, but since that ninth place the Scot has missed cuts in India and America and was a lowly 65th out of 77 at the WGC-CA Championship in Miami.

Clarke, meanwhile, returns to action fresh off his win in the BMW Asian Open last Sunday Shanghai, and was happy to score a victory after a journalist wrote last year that he was "continuing his inexorable slide towards oblivion."

"I can take criticism when criticism is due, but there was no call for that," he said. "It was totally gratuitous and it's nice to prove them wrong."

A 40-foot birdie putt on the final green of the Asian Open gave the 39-year-old his first victory in three years -- and, of course, his first since his wife Heather died two years ago.

Next week he is in Austria with German football legend Franz Beckenbauer at a dinner for a breast cancer charity, but first he is trying to shake off jet lag in time to challenge for another title.

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