GREENSBORO, N.C. – Lucas Glover was at the end of his rope.
The yips, the involuntary wrist spasms that occur most commonly when golfers are trying to putt, had plagued Glover for the better part of a decade.
“I had no control over my faculties sometimes,” he said. “I could just lose all feelings over a 10-inch putt. It was frustrating. I fought it for a long time.”
But thanks to a long putter and a split-handed putting grip, he has regained his confidence on the greens and he holed enough putts on Sunday to win the Wyndham Championship and earn his fifth career PGA Tour title.
“It’s been a revelation for me,” Glover said.
He closed with a 2-under 68 at Sedgefield Country Club and finished with a 72-hole total of 20-under 260, one stroke better than Russell Henley and Ben An.
Glover points to a 4-putt on the fifth green at Colonial Country Club in the first round of the Charles Schwab Challenge a decade ago as the start of the dastardly affliction. The winner of the 2009 U.S. Open among his four previous titles had tried just about everything, including putting with his eyes closed. The stats tell the ugly story of his steep decline: he was 180th in Strokes Gained: Putting this season entering this week. But he’s been downright putrid on the shortest of putts. In the 2020-21 season, Glover missed 24 putts from 3 feet and in (863 for 887), a miss rate of 2.71 percent that ranked 196th on Tour. In 2021-22, he missed 27 shorties (193rd). The 43-year-old was struggling so mightily this season – already 26 misses from short range through July – and his confidence was so dented that he considered a switch to putting left-handed or with a long putter.
“I just tried the long putter first,” he said. “I had two weeks off before Memorial and just ordered [a new putter] and taught myself how to use it and been kind of sticking to that.” He added, “If you ever want a Tour player to practice more, you give them a new club because they’ve got to get used to it, figure it out. That’s kind of how it’s been.”
Last month, at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Glover switched to a broomstick-style putter with a mallet head, the L.A.B. Mezz.1 Max, and ranked fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting that week, registering his first top-10 finish of the season.
“Making all your tap-ins is nice,” said Glover, who ranked 15th in SG: Putting this week. “When my speed’s good, I seem to make a lot of putts.”
The winning moment for @Lucas_Glover_ 👏 pic.twitter.com/v0nVspn01A
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 7, 2023
Glover ranked 189th in the FedEx Cup when he taught himself his new split-handed grip, where the left hand hovers away from his chest and his right hand is separated and positioned farther down the club in a claw-style grip, in his garage ahead of the Memorial in early June. In July, he reeled off three straight top 10s — a T-4 at Rocket Mortgage Classic, a T-6 at John Deere Classic and a T-5 at the Barbasol Championship — and after a missed cut last week, he climbed back into the trophy hunt at Sedgefield CC, where he made his 19th career start, the most of any player since 2004, after rounds of 66-64-62. Beginning the week at No. 112 in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, he needed to finish no worse than a two-way tie for second to have a chance to qualify and did better than that, vaulting to No. 49 in the season-long points race.
In the final round, Glover, who shared the 54-hole lead with Billy Horschel, got off to an inauspicious start with a three-putt bogey from 27 feet. But he knocked his approach from 141 yards to 4 inches at the fourth and tapped it in. He drained a 7-foot birdie at No. 8 and 15-footer at No. 11 to reach 20 under. He and Henley were tied for the lead when play was suspended due to inclement weather for 2 hours and 3 minutes.
When play resumed, Henley, who has done everything but win this tournament the last four years, grabbed the lead with a 2-putt birdie at 15 but proceeded to bogey his final three holes to shoot 69 and suffered another disappointing result.
“Felt a little jittery out there, just never got into a good sync with my swing, felt kind of rushed from the top of my swing, just didn’t do a good job of handling the restart,” Henley said.
At 18, Glover caught a fortuitous break when he pulled his drive left. It appeared to be headed into tree trouble but bounced off a golf cart and closer to the fairway. Glover opted to lay up and got up and down for a closing par, fittingly sinking an 8-foot putt. When it dropped, Glover held his trusty long putter and smiled with glee.
“It’s what I needed,” he said of his putting technique. “This is a completely different motor skill and just a way to rewire my brain. … When you struggle as long as I have, or had, it just happened to be what happened to be the answer.”
