The most admirable golfer on Tour threatening at Players Championship

The most admirable golfer on the PGA Tour is Lucas Glover.

I know that sounds like an opinion masquerading as a fact, but it actually is a fact. When he wasn’t selected for the Ryder Cup team two years ago in Italy, all Glover said was, “Keegan Bradley should have made it.” He didn’t, but now Bradley is the U.S. Ryder Cup captain, at the course, Bethpage Black, where Glover won the U.S. Open in 2009, the last player to win the event without wearing a golf glove. That’s a time-saver, if you’re looking to improve your pace-of-play. No glove or, like Nicklaus, wear a glove and keep it on. Glover plays ready golf anyhow.

Part of what makes him so admirable is his straight-ahead honesty. When I asked him once about all the guaranteed funny money going around professional golf today, he said, “Meritocracy is dead.”

He also does the New York Times crossword puzzle daily and in pen. 

As for his place on the leaderboard this weekend at the Players Championship (as of this writing he was at seven under and four off the lead), if you’re rooting for him, you might be worried about his short putting. Don’t worry about his short putting. He putts fast greens well. Yes, he’s in recovery as a yipper, and once a yipper always a yipper. But he has it under control. He attacked the problem straight on, in his characteristic way. 

Here’s an exchange he had with a reporter after his Thursday round at TPC Sawgrass, aka the Stadium Course, where he arrived on property 44th in the world ranking: 

Reporter: “What’s the difference for you at 45 compared to say 10 years ago? What do you have to overcome?”

Luke: “Honestly, 10, 20 years ago, I’d get pretty amped-up out there. I’d get pretty excited. I’d have to rein that in sometimes. Here you’ve got to rein in being too aggressive. I still have those thoughts about missing short putts and hitting bad shots, just like everybody else. But I got some tools in my brain and in my bag now that I can pull out when I’m not feeling my best over a putt or over a shot that I probably didn’t have 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

“So I would say that’s probably the biggest So I would say that’s probably the biggest difference. There’s just a confidence in what I’ve been able to do and learn.”

Reporter (without using the y-word!): That part is like worlds different even though from like three years ago, right?

Luke: “Oh, yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. It’s not even close. I had several today, left-edge putts downhill, fast, from two and three feet that I would have missed three years ago, two years ago, no questions asked. Just nervy and gross and yuck. But, yeah, and you get those out here. You get a lot of short putts outside the hole. But I don’t seem to have that issue now. There’s just a confidence in what I’ve been able to do and learn.” 

Glover, guided by his longtime manager and unofficial coach Mac Barnhardt, found his way to two unconventional putting coaches in recent years. I’ve talked to both at length. One was a firefighter named Ward Jervis from Paducah, Ky. Later he started working with a Navy SEAL sharpshooter and former pitcher named Jason Kuhn. Both are interesting and original thinkers who have an expertise in how to breathe while under stress. Glover is way too aware, as a person, to compare their life-and-death work with his own. But they have helped him, helped him in his breathing, and in clearing his head. Tinkering with putters, Glover has said, has helped, too.

Putters

Lucas has been one of my favorite people in golf for the past 15 years. After he won the U.S. Open, he told me his favorite moment of the whole thing was the following week, when he walked on to the practice tee at the Hartford tournament and realized that “guys were looking at me different.”

That was then. Now, like Hogan, he looks deep into himself to take stock of himself. (Hogan once said, “I am the sole judge of my own standards.”) Late in 2023, I was having a Sunday breakfast with Lucas at a deli in New York City. (He had come to New York with his wife for Fashion Week.) Your friends are your friends, and your peers are your peers, Lucas said, “But what you realize over time is that nobody else’s opinion of what you do really matters. In golf, what you do is what you do.” He’s going to miss some short putts — they all do. He’s going to make most of them. You don’t get to where Lucas Glover is in life without making most of them.

Last year, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, I caddied for Fred Perpall, the USGA president. Lucas was Fred’s pro. On the 8th hole, Fred had a slow uphill 25-foot putt for birdie. But how slow?

“See that mountain back there?” Lucas told his am. Beyond the course and the houses on it was a modest mountain. “You’re putting right up that mountain.”

Perpall rammed his putt right up to the hole and tapped in for his par.

Glover had a hooking four-footer for birdie, straight downhill. He rolled it right in.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com