Lucas Glover's professional career is littered with incredible ups and incredible downs. In his PGA Tour rookie season, he lost his card and gained it back, before securing his first win in 2005. Just four years later, he picked up the 2009 US Open, before a win at the 2011 Wells Fargo Championship sent him on a 10-year period of no PGA Tour victories.
During that time, the American suffered with the dreaded yips, a symptom which manifests in a number of ways such as freezing, an involuntary movement that you can’t control or a jerk. Such was the severity of his yips, Glover even considered "putting left-handed" at one point.
However, in 2021, he secured his first PGA Tour title in 10 years and, in 2023, is enjoying a season which has yielded back-to-back PGA Tour titles at the Wyndham Championship and FedEx St. Jude Championship.
Moving into the Ryder Cup picture, it has been the putter that has been one of the key and crucial changes to Glover's game, with the American taking advice from one of the game’s finest ever putters, Brad Faxon. Recommending that Glover try a long putter, Glover got the same flatstick as Adam Scott, who was also known to struggle when on the greens with the putter.
The putter in question is the L.A.B. Mezz.1 Max, which is designed to offer maximum forgiveness and stability. L.A.B Golf make a number of other models, as well as offering their putters in standard length, armLock, and broomstick, which Glover uses on his putter.
Previously, the 43-year-old has used an Odyssey #7, a Scotty Cameron Select Squareback 2 and even a custom Arthur putter made by Argolf, a company based in America that builds a wide range of putters made from aeronautical materials. Now though, in 2023, he has been using the Mezz.1 Max to much success.
As mentioned, Adam Scott uses a L.A.B. putter, with the Aussie changing to the flatstick at the tail-end of 2021. His putter features in a unique blue finish and has his 'AS' logo, as well as a kangaroo stamped on it.
Along with Scott, Richard Bland also uses a L.A.B. putter, but his features in standard length, with Byeong Hun An using a L.A.B putter similar to Glover's throughout the 2022-23 PGA Tour season. One last big name to yield the flatstick is former Major winner, Sergio Garcia, who was pictured using one at the 2023 Masters.
Speaking at the 2023 John Deere Classic, Glover stated: "I needed a whole new idea. A whole new brain function. The other one obviously wasn’t working. I’ve been struggling with short putts for so long. Just thought I needed to teach myself to do something else, and it’s been working."
A few weeks later, at the Wyndham Championship, he would speak more about his putter, with the Major winner revealing that the technique with the L.A.B putter was completely self-taught.
“I don't want to know anything else and I'll teach myself how to do this. (I) spent a couple days in the garage, figured out how to stand. Took it to the practice green and spent about 10 days working on it. Took it to Memorial and putted nice. My misses weren't that crazy, awful, yippy stroke, they were just misses. And that's OK. It's just basically a whole new motor skill, a whole new brain function because it's so different, so out there from what I was doing."
