As good as Lucas Glover has been in consecutive victories on the PGA Tour, timing them just right to get into the FedEx Cup playoffs with the first one and jump into contention to win the big prize with the second one, it’s his victory over the yips that shines like a full moon on a clear night.
The yips destroy golfers, particularly those who play golf for a living and can’t trust themselves from 18 inches.
Bernhard Langer is a survivor, but he’s the rare one.
It was Ben Hogan, who froze over putts later in his career, who said when he looked at the hole, he saw it filled with his own blood.
Hello darkness my old friend.
Call it what you will – a curse, a disease, an affliction, an anxiety – but the result is the same: it’s soul-crushing.
And yet here is Glover, having gone around the dark side of the moon, posing with trophies again.
The victories are two-fold: the literal tournaments he has won during the past two weeks in Greensboro and Memphis and the triumph over what has beaten many others.
“If you would have told me this three months ago, I’d tell you you’re crazy. But at the same time, if you asked me legitimately did I think I was capable, I’d say yes, even then,” Glover said Sunday night. “It’s just one of those sad ways athletes are wired. We always believe in ourselves no matter how bad it is.
“I never gave that up, but, like, middle of May, it was hard to go to the range some days and hard to work. But we pushed through and did it anyway.”
Ball-striking is in Glover’s DNA. He’s a natural athlete, and he can stand over a tee shot virtually certain of where his slight draw is going to land. It was getting the ball into the hole – particularly, the closer he got to the hole – that tortured Glover.
Glover missed 27 times from inside 3 feet last year. By comparison, Rory McIlroy, Billy Horschel, Mackenzie Hughes and others never missed inside 3 feet, each with more than 500 such putts.
Glover remembers the moment the darkness arrived: a sudden four-putt on the fifth green at Colonial Country Club a decade ago.
“I don’t know what caused it. I don’t know what started it,” Glover said.
“Brain was just fried. Ten years of dealing with it and not understanding it and not realizing or not comprehending how it could happen that I could just lose all feelings over a 10-inch putt. It was frustrating. I fought it for a long time.”
In the 2021-22 PGA Tour season, Glover ranked 189th in strokes gained putting, the bottom of the barrel. More glaring was his rank of 193rd from 3 feet and closer.
Glover missed 27 times from inside 3 feet last year. By comparison, Rory McIlroy, Billy Horschel, Mackenzie Hughes and others never missed inside 3 feet, each with more than 500 such putts.
This season, Glover ranks dead last inside 3 feet with 26 misses from that range, but almost all of that happened before he switched to a broomstick putter in early June.
Having tried the arm-lock method for a while and grinding through practice sessions without seeing any improvement, Glover forced the change. Talking with Brad Faxon, one of the most respected putting coaches in the game, Glover was persuaded to give the L.A.B. Mezz.1 Max putter a try.
He had seen the difference in Adam Scott’s work on the greens and asked for one exactly like Scott’s. It didn’t matter what the specs were; Glover wanted different.
After practicing with it for a while, he put in play at the Memorial Tournament and felt different immediately. He didn’t make the cut but thought that he was on to something.
Even when he missed a 2-foot putt on the final hole of U.S. Open qualifying to miss advancing by one stroke, Glover was encouraged more than discouraged.
Missing putts is a fact of life in golf. It’s how and why they are missed that matters.
“Walking back to the car after missing that putt, my dad was there, and (caddie) Tommy [Lamb] was with me,” Glover said. “Tom just looked at me and goes, ‘I don’t really care that you missed that putt. This is a process with this new putter, and there’s going to be some bumps,’ but he said, ‘I can’t tell you how much better you look and how much more confident you look.’
“I needed to hear that at that moment, even though I was kind of dejected. Went on to Canada and had my best week in a few months.”
Since then, having replaced trepidation with trust, Glover has finished sixth or better in five of his past six starts, including two victories.
At age 43, Glover has climbed to fourth in the FedEx Cup points race and 30th in the Official World Golf Ranking. He has also put himself in the discussion for one of the six captain’s picks Zach Johnson will make for the U.S. Ryder Cup team after the six automatic qualifiers are determined at the end of the BMW Championship this week.
Glover has not played in a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup. Asked Sunday night whether he would pick himself now, Glover said, “Absolutely.”
Will Glover be in Rome playing the Ryder Cup?
It’s a question no one thought to ask barely two weeks ago.
“Ten years up until this run, I’ve underachieved and knew it,” said Glover, whose six PGA Tour victories include the 2009 U.S. Open. “It was all because of putting. I won the [2021] Deere because I hit it [to grip length] a bunch for a week basically and snuck them in somehow.
“It was just believing in myself, and hard-headed and stubborn enough to not give up… It was just, I’ll figure it out, and it took something drastic to figure it out, but it’s worked, obviously.”