The text from a friend came through a little after 7:30 Eastern on Sunday evening, a succinct commentary on the progress of the FedEx St. Jude Championship: “I feel Glover should be allowed to change pants.”
Lucas Glover was struggling. Not with his golf game — he was, at that moment, tied for the lead in the tournament, the first round of the FedEx Cup playoffs — but with his aesthetic. Poor Lucas was sweating in the Memphis heat, sweating so much that huge, unfortunate stains had formed all over his khaki pants, front and back.
While fellow competitors like Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa looked sleek and comfortable in the smothering humidity, the sweaty, fatigued, 43-year-old Glover looked … well, he looked a whole lot like us. Who hasn’t felt the cold, clammy slickness of sweat in a crucial moment, wondering if they have what it takes to push forward? And wouldn’t it be nice to be able to change pants in that moment?
There is, of course, one key difference between Lucas Glover and your everyday sweat-dripping weekend hacker. Glover has just won two straight PGA Tour events, Sunday’s FedEx St. Jude and last week’s Wyndham, pocketing just under $4 million in eight days’ time. Not a bad run for a guy sweating worse than a teenager trying to buy beer for the first time.
“You work hard no matter what, whether you’re fighting something or you’re playing great,” Glover said just after winning Sunday. “You just work hard because you never know when it can turn, and it’s turned very quickly for me. Luckily I’ve been in a good frame of mind to take advantage of it.”
As recently as this June, Glover looked like he was in serious danger of losing not just his PGA Tour card, but the entire thread of his career. At a U.S. Open qualifying event in Columbus, Ohio, he missed an 18-inch putt that would have sent him back to the tournament he’d once won. The road was dark, but to his credit, Glover says he never considered calling it a day.
“If you would have told me [two consecutive victories were coming] three months ago, I’d tell you you’re crazy,” he said Sunday evening. “But at the same time, if you asked me legitimately did I think I was capable, I’d say yes, even then. It’s just one of those sad ways athletes are wired. We always believe in ourselves no matter how bad it is.”
For a long while there, it was really, really bad. Glover is best known for winning the 2009 U.S. Open, defeating Phil Mickelson and others by two strokes after having to qualify his way into the tournament. Not long after that, he slid into a decade-long slump, a grim slog where he had to play his way back onto the PGA Tour even as his 10-year U.S. Open exemption dwindled away to nothing. He hasn’t even been eligible to play in any major since the 2022 PGA Championship.
So why go on? Why continue to hack away when the brick wall between you and success just seemed to get higher and thicker every year?
“Maybe I’m really stubborn,” Glover said. “You know, [for the last] 10 years up until this run, I’ve underachieved and knew it. It was all because of putting.”
Glover switched to a long putter earlier this summer, and while it wasn’t a quick-change magic wand — he missed that U.S. Open qualifier putt with the long putter — it gave him the confidence he needed to realign his entire game.
Now, he’s enjoying the day-to-day a bit more. A lifelong golf grinder, he’s full of old-dude observations that will resonate with pros and hackers alike. (“It’s fun,” he says of life on tour, “except for when I have to do my laundry. Then it’s not that fun.”)
Plus, he even indulges in that ultimate Golf Guy fantasy: the Life Hack. Late in the tournament Sunday, he plunged his hands into ice water-filled coolers along the course. He was cooling off, yes, but in true Golf Guy fashion, there was a deeper purpose, too.
“If you leave them in there as long as you can stand it and then wipe them off real quick, it closes your pores up for 10, 15 minutes,” he said. “It literally stops them from sweating for a little while.” Come on. If that’s not the most Dad-advice trick — “stick your hands in ice water, it’ll keep you from sweating!” — and here Glover is, doing it on the 71st hole of a golf tournament.
Alas, Glover wasn’t able to keep his backside from sweating — the PGA Tour probably wouldn’t have approved of him sticking his bare butt in a cooler — but so what? He’s headed to the Tour Championship, he’ll have exemptions into 2024’s PGA Tour signature events, and he’ll be playing in majors again.
Any time he’s sweating now, he knows he can handle the pressure … no matter how he looks while doing it. There’s something inspiring in that, even if you grimace a little while watching.
