The post Lucas Glover explains why he doesn’t wear a golf glove appeared first on Golf.

The post Lucas Glover explains why he doesn’t wear a golf glove appeared first on Golf.

For most golfers, gloves are an essential piece of equipment. But 2009 U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover has, incredibly, never used one.

On this week’s episode of Subpar, Glover joined hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz to discuss, among other things, how he manages to hit tens of thousands of balls per year without wearing a glove.

“I always wanted to be a no-glove guy,” Stoltz said to Glover. “[But I] couldn’t even make contact with [the ball].”

Putting

How this firefighter's high-stress putting drills helped Lucas Glover temper his yips

By: Michael Bamberger

“Never, ever wore one,” Glover replied. “Years ago, Dick Harmon in Houston, he’d cut the fingers out for me, hitting a bunch of balls when I was a kid. He said, well you gotta try it, your hands are gonna hurt, bleed or whatever. I said, well, I can’t really feel the club. He goes, well, if that’s the case, let’s not do that when it matters. So we kinda of stayed away from it. Just never got into it. I’m a solid 10-handicap with a glove.”

As the hosts marveled, Knost brought up another point.

“I don’t know how your contracts are, but I know my contracts were ball, shoe and glove,” Knost said.

“I’ve always said they should give a little more up front, since I don’t waste any money on gloves,” Glover joked. “But I haven’t gotten any traction on that.”

When you swing the club with your bare hands, making sure you get a good grip on the club is especially important. Glover said that his caddie wipes his grips down every tournament day, but he uses full cord grips for maximum tackiness. And with four Tour wins on his resume — including the recent 2021 John Deere Classic — Glover is clearly doing something right.

For more from Glover, check out his full interview below.

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The post Lucas Glover Interview: Playing without a glove, leading the charge into Clemson’s Death Valley appeared first on Golf.

The post Lucas Glover Interview: Playing without a glove, leading the charge into Clemson’s Death Valley appeared first on Golf.

On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar, 4-time PGA Tour winner Lucas Glover joins former PGA Tour pro Colt Knost and jicky jack legend Drew Stoltz for an exclusive interview. The winner of the 2021 John Deere Classic talks his 10 year gap between Tour victories, playing without a glove, and leading the charge into Death Valley for his alma mater Clemson.

This week’s episode is presented by FanDuel Sportsbook. If you’ve never tried FanDuel Sportsbook, what are you waiting for? Go to Fanduel dot come slash subpar or download the FanDuel Sportsbook app to get started. Be sure to sign up with promo code SUBPAR so they know we sent you.

Disclaimer: 21+ and present in NJ. New users only. $5 first deposit required. Must wager in designated offer market. Max bet $5. Bonus issued as non withdrawable site credit that expires 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call: 1-800-GAMBLER (NJ)

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The post GOLF’s Subpar: Lucas Glover talks competing on Tour without a glove appeared first on Golf.

The post GOLF’s Subpar: Lucas Glover talks competing on Tour without a glove appeared first on Golf.

Subpar’s Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz are joined by 4-time PGA Tour winner Lucas Glover who explains why he chooses to compete without using a glove.

This week’s episode is presented by FanDuel Sportsbook. If you’ve never tried FanDuel Sportsbook, what are you waiting for? Go to Fanduel dot come slash subpar or download the FanDuel Sportsbook app to get started. Be sure to sign up with promo code SUBPAR so they know we sent you.

Disclaimer: 21+ and present in NJ. New users only. $5 first deposit required. Must wager in designated offer market. Max bet $5. Bonus issued as non withdrawable site credit that expires 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call: 1-800-GAMBLER (NJ)

The post GOLF’s Subpar: Lucas Glover talks competing on Tour without a glove appeared first on Golf.

The post How to play good golf after a long flight, according to a major winner appeared first on Golf.

The post How to play good golf after a long flight, according to a major winner appeared first on Golf.

Lucas Glover waited 244 consecutive starts before finally lifting a trophy once again by winning the John Deere Classic last week. That was on Sunday night, and the following morning, he was on a plane to England to play the 2021 Open Championship.

Glover has good memories at Royal St. George’s, too — his best finish at an Open Championship came there in 2011 when he finished T12.

Putting

How this firefighter's high-stress putting drills helped Lucas Glover temper his yips

By: Michael Bamberger

“The course is great,” he said. “The rough is really thick in spots and there are lots of blind shots that you need to prepare for.”

Coming back to the grounds for the first time in 10 years after a long trip over the pond, Glover is contending with a similar problem the rest of us face anytime we go on a buddies trip: trying to play well while navigating the effects of jet lag and tiredness. It’s especially important right now, considering his emotionally draining week at the John Deere.

But Glover’s been through this rodeo before, and he’s got some advice for the rest of us about how to do it.

1. Stay hydrated

The first — and perhaps most important — step to playing well after a long trip that may include a time-zone change is to monitor your hydration levels, Glover says.

The air pressure and lower levels of humidity inside the cabins of airplanes means it’s easier to become dehydrated faster. If that flight is a long one and you’re not proactively replacing those fluids along the way, you’ll hurt your body’s ability to recover.

“I make sure to drink lots of water and monitor my hydration,” Glover says. “If I don’t it’ll be harder to focus, and I won’t feel 100 percent the next day.”

2. Go easy on the first day

This is a trap so many of us fall into on our buddies trips. We get off the plane and immediately head to the golf course. But Glover says whenever he makes the trip abroad, he makes sure to take it easy on the first day and not go overboard practicing or playing.

“I played nine holes the day I landed, just to get a feel for the place,” Glover says. “I’m trying to keep my energy levels up and stay loose  … not go overboard.”

3. Stay up late for two days

When you’re dealing with a time-zone change, the goal is to get your body set on local time as soon as possible. For Glover, that means staying up late at night not just on the day you land, but the day after, too.

“I don’t know why, but it’s always the second day that’s the hardest for me … when I’m the most tired,” Glover says. “I try really hard to stay up as late as I can for two nights. If I do that, I’ll feel fine the next day.”

In order for this two-day adjustment period to work, Glover says you need to resist the urge to fall asleep when you’re tired during the day, and make sure to commit to trying to sleep at night, when you may not be tired.

Glover, who is sponsored by Medterra, says he uses two products to help with that: Medterra’s “Sleep Tight” CBD gummies and Medterra’s CBD Tinctures. One dose before each night’s sleep, he says, and he’ll be feeling fine the next day.

4. Focus on your setup, not your swing

And perhaps most important of all, Glover says it’s important to keep things simple when you’re tired, jet-lagged, or playing in an unfamiliar environment. Now is not the time to tinker with your swing, he says.

“For me, it’s about eliminating as many thoughts as possible over the ball,” Glover says. “I pay a lot of attention to my setup. I want to make sure everything is square, and then just let things go.”

The post How to play good golf after a long flight, according to a major winner appeared first on Golf.

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At the risk of repeating myself, and recognizing that my rooting interests and my gambling interests unwisely and often overlap, I have a dark(ish) horse for this week’s British Open: Mr. Lucas Glover.

Yes, close readers with long memories (two months is long these days) may recall that in May I was on the verge of touting Glover, in the days leading up to the PGA Championship, as a dark-horse pick. Then I learned of one significant problem: Glover was not in the field.

News

He's a great dark horse for the PGA Championship. There’s just one problem

By: Michael Bamberger

Glover, winner of the 2009 U.S. Open, was not in this year’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, either. But he is in this week’s British Open at Royal St. George’s. He was in, and planning to play, even if he hadn’t won last week’s event, the John Deere Classic, which he did do. It was on TV.

Sunday night, Glover took a charter flight, with other touring pros, from Moline, Ill., to merry old England. Lucas and his “team.” Which is to say Lucas. His longtime caddie, Don Cooper, couldn’t make the trip. His passport had expired. Lucas is not traveling with his family or his agent or, to use the words he used in his post-victory press conference, “a gentleman named Ward Jarvis.”

A reporter had asked Glover about his putting routine, and this (with minor editing) is what Glover said that night:

“I started working with a gentleman named Ward Jarvis, who works with several other guys out here. I started with him right around Puerto Rico this year and we developed a couple of things that I do every time, no matter what.

News

Lucas Glover snaps drought of 'a long 10 years' with win at John Deere Classic

By: Sean Zak

“Two weeks ago, at home, I started taking a practice stroke behind the ball instead of beside it because it helped me get a more consistent set up. I started taking a practice stroke right down my line from right behind the ball and then just walk in and get going.”

Ward Jarvis. The gentleman from Kentucky is not at the Open this week. But was at the Deere, and he hardly told Glover a thing all week, because Lucas didn’t need much.

This week, Jarvis is back home, in Paducah, where he’s a professional firefighter. (Twenty-four hours on, 48 hours off. That’s how the fire-house shifts go there, and in many other cities.) A professional firefighter with a rooting interest in four golfers playing in the Open this week at Royal St. George’s in southern England: Glover, Brendon Todd, Jimmy Walker and amateur Cole Hammer.

Jarvis, a 43-year-old husband and father with a master’s degree who found he doesn’t like indoor work, comes by his second job, as a golf coach, the hard way.

“I have stuttered my whole life and I have played golf my whole life,” he said Tuesday, by phone. “I started making connections between the mental connections of stuttering and the mental connections of yipping. The similarity is what you do in these pressure situations.”

Yipping golfers often don’t yip while practicing. They need the stakes to be high for the yip to appear. So one of Jarvis’ goals is to create practice scenarios that have this-is-not-a-test anxiety. In his own high-pressure situations, when working live fires, Jarvis finds he doesn’t stutter. He examined the reasons why he doesn’t and brings that thinking to the golfers with whom he works.

Glover’s issues chiefly relate to short putting. Brendan Todd’s issues relate to shots off the tee. Jimmy Walker’s issues relate to chipping. Cole Hammer, 21, is too young to have golf-swing issues. But he apparently likes what Jarvis says.

Glover found his way to Jarvis by way of his manager, Mac Barnhardt. When Barnhardt and Glover talk about Glover’s putting issues, they don’t use the word yips. They say “the ya-yas.” Just for fun. They’re not afraid of the word.

“I think everybody has the yips, at times,” Barnhardt said in a phone interview. Putting yips, chipping yips, driving yips. Some kind of performance anxiety. When Tiger Woods was suffering from the chip yips in Tour events, he chipped at home with no issues at all.

“You can’t be cured of the yips — everybody has them. But you can minimize them.”

Tom Watson agrees with that. He has said, more than once, “Once a yipper, always a yipper.” But that doesn’t mean that once you yip one, you’re going to miss the next one and the following one and the one after that. 

Watson, winner of 5.5 British Opens, has a unique golfing sensibility. In interviews, he will often mention Byron Nelson and his lifelong teacher Stan Thirsk but also, now and again and apropos of nothing, the lefthander Russ Cochran.

Cochran won only once on the PGA Tour but was able to play the Tour successfully for almost 20 years because he had a spectacular short game and a knack for getting the ball in the hole. Watson admired his game. Cochran is from Paducah. Jarvis learned the golf swing by watching Cochran and getting instruction from him. Jarvis played college golf at Samford University, in Birmingham, Ala.

Tom Weiskopf was the opposite of Cochran. He had perfect mechanics, a perfect physique for golf, and all through his career he looked like he was going to win multiple Grand Slam events, particularly the three played in the United States. He won one, the one that is played in the British Isles. He won the Open at Troon, in 1973. He told me once, years ago, that he won on the Scottish linksland because the golf was so unpredictable and quirky there. Allowing and accepting golfing weirdness was part of the equation. It let him, he said, bury his perfectionistic impulses and accept surprise.

Weiskopf once told me, “It’s too bad I was born in the United States — I should have been born a Scot.”

Soon after hearing that quote I relayed it to a wise old Scottish teaching pro named John Stark. “Then we may never have heard of him,” Stark said. “His whole technique might have been different.”

All of that is to warm you up for the interesting thing Jarvis does with Glover and others. Maxwell Smart would call it The Old Stolen Ball Trick. Lucas will be practicing, stroking one putt after another. Getting in his groove. Then Jarvis, mid-stroke and with no warning, will hook a ball away, like a croupier raking back a pair of dice. 

“The ball-removal drill gives your brain a different experience,” Jarvis told me. “Golf has a lot of chaos. I try to bring structure to the chaos, but also chaos to the chaos.”

Links golf, as Watson and Weiskopf know, comes with a lot of built-in chaos. Royal St. George’s is Chaos Central. I like Luke. He’s in the field, so that’s good, and he’s come to terms with the chaos that is part of the game.

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

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The post How rust affects your swing, according to Rory McIlroy appeared first on Golf.

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Welcome to Teachable Moments, GOLF’s weekly instruction column that will help you improve your game through the excellence and expertise of the Tour stars of the week. Class is now in session.

Rory’s rust

Rory McIlroy has played the last two weeks in Ireland and Scotland as he prepares for this week’s Open Championship, but the results haven’t quite been up to snuff. In two starts across the pond, the four-time major winner has a missed cut and finished T59.

This was McIlroy’s first action since a T7 finish at the U.S. Open last month, and he admitted that he hadn’t practiced much in the immediate aftermath of his most recent major, and the rust on his game was apparent — particularly with the driver. While the big stick is usually his most lethal weapon, it wasn’t as sharp in Ireland and Scotland.

Prior to his start in Scotland, the 32-year-old talked a bit about rust and how it affects his game, especially with longer clubs.

“The longer the club gets, the more exaggerated the move is,” McIlroy said. “You can get away with it with the shorter clubs because they are shorter clubs, but once you get a longer club in your hand, that’s where some of the bad habits start to creep in a little bit more.”

This is good intel to keep in mind when coming off a layoff. You won’t have to worry about big misses as much with shorter clubs in your hands, but be wary with a driver.

Na’s crafty chipping

Kevin Na hit a nifty chip shot during the John Deere Classic last week, but the shot came with an unlikely club — his putter.

Na’s ball settled in an awkward place off the green splitting the collar and the rough. So, he decided on an unconventional method to hit the shot: using the toe of his putter. The shot paid off as he holed it for an unlikely birdie. Check it out below.

Sometimes around the collar of the greens, your ball can end up in some funky spots that make traditional chips and putts a little tricky. That’s when a little imagination comes in handy. Using the toe of the putter (or a club like a wood or a hybrid) allows the club to pass through the rough easier and deliver a predictable strike on the ball.

If you get into an odd spot around the greens, don’t be afraid to use a little imagination.

Glover’s new routine

After over 10 years, Lucas Glover is back in the winner’s circle. The former U.S. Open champion outlasted a host of contenders at the John Deere Classic last week, closing with a 64 for a two-shot victory.

They key to his success was his comfort on the greens. With no shortage of birdies at a soggy TPC Deere Run, racking up circles on the card was a must. After his win, Glover shared that he made a tweak to his setup recently that gave him newfound confidence with the flatstick.

“Last week or two weeks ago at home I started taking a practice stroke behind the ball instead of beside it because it helped me with my setup, getting more consistently set up instead of practice stroke behind and then moving in,” Glover said. “So I started taking a practice stroke right down my line right behind the ball and then just walking in and going.”

Sometimes all it takes is a little more comfort. For Glover, it resulted in a trophy.

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The post Lucas Glover snaps drought of ‘a long 10 years’ with win at John Deere Classic appeared first on Golf.

The strategy needed to win the John Deere Classic has for years meant one simple thing: make a ton of birdies. The numbers back it up, too: no tournament has witnessed more birdies over the years than the JDC.

So when Lucas Glover mounted a comeback Sunday to win his first PGA Tour event in more than a decade, there was only going to be one way to get it done — with a bunch of circles on his scorecard. 

Glover made five birdies on his final seven holes Sunday at TPC Deere Run, including four straight on holes 12 through 15 to vault himself to the top of a packed leaderboard and win by two. When asked later what his mindset was, it was unsurprisingly simple: “Make as many birdies as possible … That’s kind of what happened.”

Glover distanced himself on the closing stretch from a group that, at one point, saw nine players within one shot of the lead on the back nine. And at this course, at this tournament, it’s almost always best to have more holes to play. Glover had signed for a final round 64, but many birdie opportunities remained for those still out on the course. Being the clubhouse leader is always good, but it probably means the least at this tournament.

News

2021 John Deere Classic purse: Payout information and winner's share

By: James Colgan

But every other player just … stalled out. Kevin Na, Ryan Moore, Adam Schenk, etc. Each player had to see Glover’s 19 under tally as a very reasonable destination, but none of them could get within two shots of that. Suddenly, they had run out of holes and a 41-year-old was holding up the trophy. 

Glover famously won the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, rising as high as 15th in the World Golf Ranking during the best stretch of golf of his life. He won the 2011 Wells Fargo Championship on Mother’s Day in 2011, and what followed after that was, as he put it, “a long 10 years.”

Glover dropped outside the top 600 in the world in 2015 after missing 19 cuts during the 2014 Tour season. But after doubling down on changing his fitness regiment, Glover’s results began to tick back up. Every year was just a little better than the previous one.

“It was just getting back refocused,” he said Sunday. “I always thought I could do this again, and I just needed to figure out the best way to go about it again.”

Those 19 missed cuts in 2014 were followed by just 11 in 2015. And then eight in 2016, five in 2017 and down to just three in 2018. Slow, steady and sure progress, culminating Sunday with another final round in contention and the first win he’d ever notched in front of his family. 

“I remember that was my biggest takeaway when Tiger won his last Masters is that his kids got to see him as a champ,” Glover said. “That was a goal of mine, too.”

Now he’ll get another Masters moment of his own, earning his way back into the 2022 Masters field with his win this week.

The post Lucas Glover snaps drought of ‘a long 10 years’ with win at John Deere Classic appeared first on Golf.

The post Winner’s bag: Lucas Glover at the 2021 John Deere Classic appeared first on Golf.

The post Winner’s bag: Lucas Glover at the 2021 John Deere Classic appeared first on Golf.

Lucas Glover won the 2021 John Deere Classic on Sunday to end a 10-year winless drought on the PGA Tour; his last win came at the 2011 Wells Fargo Championship. This week, Glover fired a final-round 64 to win by two shots over Ryan Moore and Kevin Na.

Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion, currently uses a mixed bag of equipment from several brands, including Srixon, Ping, Mizuno and Titleist. Below, we dive into the gear Glover used this week at the John Deere Classic.

Driver: Srixon Z785 (Fujikura Ventus Blue 7X shaft), 9.5 degrees

3-wood: Ping G425 Max (TPT Golf 14 Hi shaft), 14.5 degrees

Driving iron: Titleist U500 (3-iron; Fujikura Ventus Hybrid Blue 10x)

Irons: Mizuno JPX919 Tour irons (4-PW; Nippon Pro Modus3 Tour 120 shafts)

Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM7 (52 and 56 degrees; Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 125 shafts), Titleist Vokey SM5 (60 degrees; Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 125 shaft)

Putter: Scotty Cameron Select Squareback 2

Golf ball: Titleist Pro V1

Want to overhaul your bag for 2021? Find a fitting location near you at GOLF’s affiliate company True Spec Golf. For more on the latest gear news and information, check out our latest Fully Equipped podcast below!

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The post He’s a great dark horse for the PGA Championship. There’s just one problem appeared first on Golf.

The post He’s a great dark horse for the PGA Championship. There’s just one problem appeared first on Golf.

When I head to this major or that one, friends will sometimes ask me for a little help with their office pools. (You remember office pools, don’t you?) I cite my long history of being a lousy swami, but because I once had Sam Snead’s home number, they want to hear whatever name I offer.

Among the usual suspects, who you like?

“Rory.”

OK. Now I need a dark horse.

“Lucas.”

Lucas. Right. How do you pronounce that last name?

“That’s not a question.”

Lucas Glover.

Turns out, one problem there.

Lucas Glover is not in the field.

Lifestyle

PGA Championship expert picks to win, sleepers to watch at Kiawah Island

By: Nick Piastowski

Lucas Herbert is. HER-burt. He won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic 16 months ago.

Lucas Glover, best known for winning the 2009 U.S. Open, was born in South Carolina. He went to Clemson. He won the South Carolina Amateur three times. He hits it right on the face in every kind of wind and can flight it low and high and in between. He was, for years, a student of the late Dick Harmon, the quintessential PGA of America pro.

All that makes for a nice story, but it doesn’t get you into the 2021 PGA Championship at the Ocean Course at Kiawah, in coastal South Carolina. That is, it doesn’t get you an automatic spot in it.

Needless to say, Glover didn’t check off any of the many boxes for an automatic place in the field, or he’d be in the field. Among them: past PGA winner; recent major winner; recent Tour winner; top 15 at last year’s PGA; top 70 on the PGA Championship points list.; top  20 in the PGA Professional Championship, for club pros and teaching pros. Etc.

But then there is Category 11, for PGA of America invitees. You probably heard that the PGA of America’s bosses invited Rickie Fowler to play this year as a special invitee. They did. Fowler — and 39 others, including the aforementioned Mr. Herbert, a promising young Australian player ranked 64th in the world. Year after year, the PGA of America prides itself in having the top-100 players in the World Golf Ranking in the PGA field. Top 100, and then some.

Fowler is ranked 128th.

Travel

America’s toughest golf course? On paper, here’s why Kiawah’s Ocean Course is in the mix

By: Josh Sens

Steve Stricker, the American Ryder Cup captain, who is playing at Kiawah, is ranked 240th.

Charl Schwartzel, after a T3 at the Byron Nelson, is No. 109, but he was 157 on May 9, when he got his invitation. Kalle Samooja of Finland climbed to 109 after a T9 finish at the Canary Islands Championship on that same date.

Lucas Glover was No. 121 on May 9, after missing the cut at Quail Hollow, where he’s won. He’s 85th right now on the FedEx list. He’s 71st on the money list for the year. He’s been playing well, and way better than he was, say, five years ago.

But as of Wednesday night, he was the third alternate to get in the field. He’s not getting in the field. He could have been invited. He wasn’t invited.

Aaron Rai, an English golfer who wears two gloves, got invited. Lucas Glover did not. He’s home, practicing, his left hand as tanned as his right. He wears no gloves.

The last thing he wants is your sympathy. “I didn’t play well enough to get in,” Glover said by text. That’s what the old-school pros say. They don’t whine. They figure out a way to make better scores, or die trying.

You know those pools where you pick a guy and afterward that name is spent? You might take a look at this Aaron Rai. Good golfer. He won last year’s Scottish Open. Maybe you didn’t notice. The mahoffs at the PGA of America did. He plays early Thursday afternoon. He’s in the field, which means he has a chance.

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

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The post This would-be agent wants to transform how golfers are represented. All he needs is a client appeared first on Golf.

The post This would-be agent wants to transform how golfers are represented. All he needs is a client appeared first on Golf.

If golf has a real-life Jerry Maguire, it’s Mac Barnhardt, who has, over the past 25 years, represented Davis Love, Justin Leonard, David Duval, Lucas Glover, Brandt Snedeker and other popular favorites. At the moment, he doesn’t represent anyone. Still, his quest remains: to sign the first new client of the rest of his life.
 
When the U.S. Amateur is played, as it was at Bandon Dunes last week, it’s a holy week for amateurs. The event is also a confab for agents, at which (in normal times) they size up talent and chat up parents and swing coaches. In this odd year, owing to the pandemic, the agents were not hovering, but last year, like every year, they were. Any winner of a U.S. Amateur can expect to be overwhelmed with agent attention. Last year’s Amateur champ, Andy Ogletree, found that out. Barnhardt was among Ogletree’s suitors. Every agent is trying to sell something. Barnhardt sells the lessons of his life. To be frank about it, it’s not what most young golfers or their parents want to hear. Barnhardt doesn’t particularly care. He knows it’s the best thing he has going for him because he knows it’s the best thing he can give a potential client.  
 
In 2013, the company Barnhardt owned, Crown Sports Management, was bought out by Lagardère Sports, which has a golf division run by Steve Loy, Phil Mickelson’s agent. In May 2018, Barnhardt was, in his own candid telling, fired. That act triggered a noncompete clause. Barnhardt was pushed to the sidelines for a two-year period. Those two years have come and gone and then some. Which brings us to the comeback he is attempting.

In the story of his business life, to turn our subject’s 58 years on this earth into a movie script, Barnhardt’s in the part of Jerry Maguire where Jerry (Tom Cruise) is trying to recruit the fictional NFL receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to be the first client in the new, we’re-humans-first agency Jerry wants to launch. In real life, Barnhardt settled on his Rod Tidwell last summer. That’s when he started focusing his particular brand of attention, with its curious blend of purposefulness and nonchalance, on Ogletree, a tall, lean golfer from Union, Miss., where his father owns a Piggly Wiggly grocery store.
 
There have been U.S. Am winners who were destined for professional greatness (Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods). And many more who were not (Bill Sander, Nathaniel Crosby, Steve Fox). The cognoscenti don’t consider Ogletree a can’t-miss kid. The Georgia Tech golfer was ranked No. 120 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. But Mac is a true believer. 
 
“I love his work ethic, his intelligence, his maturity, his family, his value system,” Barnhardt told me during the PGA Merchandise Show. That was in January, at a time when Barnhardt, among others, was trying to get a commitment from Ogletree, without endangering the young man’s amateur status. (Doable, if you know the applicable USGA and NCAA rules.) Ogletree’s plan then was to choose among his suitors, play in the Masters in April as an amateur, turn pro the next month, after the NCCA tournament. Then a nasty virus turned the world on its head.

So instead, Ogletree stayed amateur. He played in three Tour events as an amateur and missed three cuts. At this year’s U.S. Amateur, he played in the 36-hole stroke-play qualifier and missed a playoff to qualify for the match play portion of the championship — that is, the main event — by a shot. Being an agent in pursuit of a high-profile amateur is a high-wire act, with a lot of ups and downs. It can be like being a Hollywood director where one’s status is dependent on your last movie’s box office.
 
As it happens, Barnhardt’s story actually does share a lot of Jerry Maguire. Except that is mainstream entertainment and you know how it’s going to end. If Barnhardt were available on Netflix, it would be a documentary with a familiar beginning, a revealing behind-the-scenes middle and a TBD end. 

In truth, Barnhardt is looking to do more than come back. He’s looking to reinvent how golfers are represented. The last time that happened, in the early 1960s, Mark McCormack was wearing a plaid coat and could deliver Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, as a package, to your pro-am and cocktail party. Barnhardt in 2020 (and beyond) does not want to be an agent in the traditional sense. He wants to be a performance coach, an advisor, a member of the golfer’s board of directors. He wants to vet and manage the group around the golfer that will help the golfer play better golf. “Talent minus distraction equals performance,” Barnhardt likes to say. He wants to reduce distraction. 
 
A telling phrase of the management business describes how the agent “looks after” (a chiefly British phrase) this player or that one. Mark Steinberg, for example, of Excel Sports Management, looks after Tiger Woods, Justin Rose, Matt Kuchar. Barnhardt doesn’t want to hold the hand of his golfers after their rounds or walk with them for 72 holes. “Those things aren’t going to help the golfer perform better,” he says. Barnhardt’s starting point is that to make it today, a golfer needs a team.

Mock that belief if you like, but at your own peril. Not a team with a big roster, mind you, but a team nonetheless. The right caddie, swing instructor, mental coach, fitness guy, club-fitter, accountant, travel-and-docs person. Plus, a designated place to meet these people and do the associated work during tournaments and on off weeks, too. In the mission statement in his mind, Barnhardt says that his job will be to make sure the fits are good ones, that the relationships are managed appropriately, that the financial terms make sense.

“The professional golfer should think of himself as the CEO of a small business,” Barnhardt says. “The product is tournament golf scores, the lower the better, the more years at it the better. Everything the golfer earns comes from that, and every person in the golfer’s life should contribute to performance. The best golfers have always thought about what they earn on the course, not what they make for showing up someplace.”

Barnhardt is a plus-four talker who sprinkles in references to psychologists, philosophers, ballplayers, snow-boarders, business visionaries and military generals in his conversation. His father was a Methodist minister, and the son learned at his feet, except now Mac doesn’t believe in divine anything. He believes in planning, staying the course, adjusting as necessary. He believes in work, even if work is playing golf at home with your buddies five days a week. He does not believe in get rich quick.
 
“A lot of the fathers of a lot of the kids looking to turn pro ask the same questions,” Barnhardt says. “’How many tournaments can you get him in? What guarantees can you give him?’
 
“Those aren’t the right questions. The right way to look at it is this: You hope this is the start of a 15-year career. Your son’s good, but he needs to get better and these are the things he needs to do.”
 
Now that doesn’t sound particularly fun, does it? It has the advantage of being Barnhardt’s hard-earned truth. But fun it’s not.
 
All the things Barnhardt has learned over the past 25 years are the things that, if he said them, practically guarantees that he won’t sign the young player. This conundrum is known broadly as a Catch-22.
 
“It could reinvent the business — or I could wind up working as a lift operator at Sun Valley,” Mac will tell you.

It’s an amusing comment and a telling reference. Barnhardt came up in a legendary agency, Pros, Inc., located in Richmond, Va. That agency represented Tom Kite, Lanny Wadkins, Davis Love and other golfers catching southbound trains. Mac’s job was to make the trains run on time. He looked the part and knew the lines. In 1999, Pros, Inc. was bought by Octagon. In 2003, Barnhardt broke away and became Love’s full-time guy. Soon after, he started Crown, signed Jonathan Byrd and Glover, made Sea Island, where Love and Barnhardt both live, a center for Tour players. None of this is as tidy as it sounds. It couldn’t be. 
 
As Mac became more of his own guy, he started dressing more like the snowboarder Shaun White and less like Steve Loy and Mark Steinberg. You’d often see Barnhardt at tournaments wearing a hoodie, a flat-brimmed cap and tennis shoes, talking about new-agey things.
 
All the while, he was taking a lot in. He could read players — his own and others. He’d casually make prescient observations. When Player X, a winner and a star, bought a home with an elevator, Barnhardt said, “He’s broke, he just doesn’t know it yet.” (That proved to be true.) Barnhardt has a keen understanding of the PGA Tour’s C-suite execs and how they work with Capitol Hill pols, network television deal-makers, mono-named star golfers. He knows how to read the fine print of a contract, how to ask for sponsor exemptions, how to get Korn Ferry Tour status. There’s more to being an agent than standing under a tree and chatting people up, although that’s an important skill, too.
 
Barnhardt is eager to see what Ogletree does playing alongside Tiger Woods at the Masters in November, if traditional Thursday-Friday threesomes are maintained.
 
Maybe Ogletree will be the 36-hole leader at Augusta in November. Maybe he’ll shoot 150 and miss the cut. Either way, this is Barnhardt’s view: The kid is 22. He’s good at golf, loves the game, works hard at it and has already accomplished way more than most. Let’s see what the next 15 years brings. 
 
Michael Bamberger may be reached at Michael_Bamberger@Golf.com.

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