MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Lucas Glover reacts to his winning putt on the first playoff hole at the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind on August 13, 2023. | Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images
Lucas Glover is the only player on the PGA Tour to win back-to-back events this season. Now he is advocating for a spot in the Ryder Cup.
Lucas Glover has garnered a lot of attention over the past two weeks.
He held off Russell Henley at the Wyndham Championship.
Then Glover defeated Patrick Cantlay in a playoff to win the FedEx St. Jude Championship, his second victory in as many weeks. At 43, he became the third oldest to win back-to-back weeks on the PGA Tour in the last 40 years. Only Vijah Singh at 45 (2008) and Hale Irwin at 45 (1990) were older.
Now making the Ryder Cup team is on Glover’s mind, an event he has never qualified for.
“Right now, yes,” Glover said Sunday when asked if he deserves a spot on the American Ryder Cup team. “I am playing pretty good golf, and I think I’d be pretty good in the team room and be a good partner, so yeah, absolutely I would.”
Photo by Keyur Khamar/PGA TOUR via Getty Images
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Lucas Glover plays his third shot to the 17th hole green during the final round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first event of the FedExCup Playoffs, at TPC Southwind on August 13, 2023.
The 2009 U.S. Open champion currently ranks 16th in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings.
The top six players automatically qualify for the team following the BMW Championship, scheduled for this week at Olympia Fields in Illinois.
Scottie Scheffler and Wyndham Clark have already done so.
For the other spots on the team, U.S. Captain Zach Johnson will round out the roster with six captain’s picks. Those selections will come after the Tour Championship.
Perhaps Glover will be one of those picks.
He certainly deserves consideration.
This season, Glover has recorded five top-tens, all of which have come since the beginning of July.
His putting has been otherworldly, something that has plagued him throughout his 20-year professional career.
“[For the last] 10 years up until this run, I’ve underachieved and knew it,” Glover admitted Sunday. “It was all because of putting. I won the Deere [in 2021] because I hit it in the grip a bunch for a week basically and snuck them in somehow.”
“It was just believing in myself and being hard-headed and stubborn enough not to give up. I never really thought about it, honestly. It was just, I’ll figure it out, and it took something drastic to figure it out, but it’s worked, obviously.”
Glover poured in big-time putts down the stretch Sunday.
At the 13th, Glover rolled in a 20-footer for par, keeping him at 15-under par for the championship and in contention.
On the next hole, the brutal par-3 14th, Glover pushed it right and knocked his tee shot into the water.
From the drop zone, Glover hit it to 29 feet, and a double-bogey loomed while his chances of winning the tournament dwindled.
Alas, Glover drained it for a bogey-four, thus keeping himself in the mix.
“Is there a good bogey? Well, that was one in this situation,” Glover said. “That gave me the ability to actually take some momentum off of that green, making a putt like that, even for bogey.”
He rallied from there, making pars at the 15th, 17th, and 18th while making a birdie at the easy par-5 16th to get back to 15-under.
Glover relied on his scrambling and putting to win in Memphis, two attributes needed in a Ryder Cup.
He might be a seasoned veteran, but Glover is playing the best golf of his life. Should he contend again in Chicago and then at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, Johnson will have no choice but to select Glover over someone like Justin Thomas, who sorely struggled all season.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko for more golf coverage. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough too.
