The most admirable golf in threatening tournaments in the player championship

The most admirable golf in PGA Tour is Lucas Glover.

I know it sounds like an opinion that masks as a fact, but it’s actually a fact. When he was not elected for Ryder Cup team two years ago in Italy, all Glover said it was, “KEEGAN BRADLEY Should have done it. “He didn’t. But now Bradley is the captain of the US Ryder Cup, on the course, Bethpage BlackWhere Glover won the US Open in 2009, the last player to win the event without wearing a golf. This is a time saver if you are looking to improve your game pace. No glove or, like nicklaus, wear a handle and continue. Glover plays golf ready anyway.

Part of what makes him so admirable is his direct honesty. When I once asked him about all the funny guaranteed money that goes around professional golf today, he said: “Meritocracy is dead.”

He also does New York Times Puzzle crossword daily and in the pen.

As for his place on the manager’s table this weekend at Championship (How much of this writing he was in seven under and four of the lead), If you are rooting for him, you may worry about his short placement. Don’t worry about its short placement. He puts the quick greens well. Yes, he is in healing like a yipper, and once a yipper always a yipper. But he has it under control. He attacked the problem correctly, in his characteristic way.

Here is an exchange he had with a reporter after his Thursday’s round at TPC Sawgrass, AKA The Stadiumwhere he reached the 44th property in the world rankings:

Reporter: “What is the difference for you to 45 compared to say 10 years ago? What do you have to overcome? “

Luke: “Honestly, 10, 20 years ago, I would be pretty grown there. I would be very excited. I would ever have to restore it. Here you have to restore you to be very aggressive. I still have those thoughts of losing short shocks and hitting bad shooting, just like everyone else I could not get some tools in my brain TIME for a stroke or over a stroke that I probably didn’t have 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

“So I would say it’s probably the biggest, so I would say it’s probably the biggest difference. There is only one belief in what I’ve been able to do and learn.”

Reporter (without using the word y!): This part is like a different world even though from three years ago, right?

Luke: “Oh, yes. Yes one hundred percent. It’s not even close. I had some today, left -wing strokes, quickly, from two and three legs I would have lost three years ago, two years ago, without asking any questions. Just nervous and gross and yuck. But, yes, and you get them here. You get a lot of short strokes outside the hole. But I don’t seem to have that issue now. There is only one belief in what I have been able to do and learn. “

Glover, led by his tall manager and non -coach Mac Barnhardt, found his way to two non -conventional coaches in recent years. I have talked to both of the length. One was one Firefighter named Ward Jervis From Paducah, he later started working with a Sharpshooter of the Navy and formerly the name of Jason Kuhn. Both are interesting and original thinkers who have an expertise on how to breathe while under stress. Glover is very aware, as a person, to compare their work of life and death with his. But they have helped him, helped him breathe and clean the head. Tinkering with putters, Glover has saidIt has also helped.

Lucas has been one of my favorite Golf people for the past 15 years. After he won the US Open, he told me his favorite moment for everyone was next week, when he continued in the practice of practice at the Hartford tour and realized that “the boys were looking at me different”.

That was then. Now, like Hogan, he looks deep in himself to get his reserve. (Hogan once said, “I am the only judge of my standards.”) At the end of 2023, I was eating a Sunday morning with Lucas in a Deli in New York City. (He had come to New York with his wife for fashion week.) Your friends are your friends, and your peers are your peers, Lucas said: “But what you understand over time is that no one else thinks about what you really do. In golf, what you do is what you do. Lucas Glover is in life without doing most of them.

Last year, at AT&T Pebble Beach pro-am, I became for Fred Perpall, the USA president. Lucas was Fred’s pro. In the 8th hole, Fred had a slow 25-meter-old blow per bird. But how slow?

“See that mountain again there?” Lucas told his AM. Beyond the course and the houses on it were a modest mountain. “You’re putting that mountain right away.”

He struck his blow straight to the hole and entered for his first.

Glover had a strong four -legged blow to the birds, toward the abyss. He rolled it immediately.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments in Michael.bamberger@golf.com