Open champion Glover stood tall under pressure

Posted Jun 23, 2009 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jun 23, 2009 at 06:48 PM

Tiger Woods wasn’t going to manage an unmanageable comeback Monday to win another U.S. Open on the soggy bottom that was Bethpage Black. Phil Mickelson wasn’t going to win for his cancer-fighting young wife. But the golf world seemed happy enough that a tobacco-chewing academician from Clemson named Lucas Glover did win.

A look gives those of us who used to play the game, or still do at all levels, plenty of reasons to say the Open win by Lucas Glover was plenty competitive and contested to the last putt, a knee-knocker for those in the title run those last few holes.

Glover, from Greenville, S.C., is tall, thin, a straight hitter and listens to Frank Sinatra. He also is a New York Yankees fan who with his wife sneaked away once during the just ended Open to see a game in the city.

And though Lucas Glover won the Open, Mickelson could have, perhaps should have won, missing two late short putts (a game flaw of his). A resurrected David Duval, lost for a decade in golf’s purgatory at a forgotten No. 882 ranking after once being golf’s No. 1 player, fired forgotten salvos but could not pull the frantic title run.

And someone named Ricky Barnes fell from a big third-round lead out of the run early.

Glover won at 276, with Mickelson, Duval and Barnes were tied for second at 278. Woods finished sixth with a 74-69-68-69 card. This time, it was simply too much to ask that the world’s best, Tiger Woods, make up a dozen strokes, though, for a time, he seemed to be making a brief run.

But, in the end, there was one winner, one who stood taller (he is 6-foot-2 and a trim 195 pounds) has a straight-up stance and an envied swing. The straight game got him on the soaked greens, but late, great putts got him the championship, the $1.35 million first prize and all of the other goodies Open winners receive. A 6-foot putt on the 16th gave him the two-shot lead, and he teed off at No. 18 with the sound thinking to hit a 6-iron off the tee, a smooth 9-iron to the green and a careful two-putt for the title. He had a closing round of 73, a 276 total and victory only a few years from obscurity.

Lucas Glover is only 29. He is an all-around athlete, but chose to take a golf scholarship to Clemson where he was an All-American in 2000 and 2001. He was on the U.S. Walker Cup team n 2001, then turned professional. Glover played on the Nationwide tour in 2002 and joined the PGA Tour two years later. But when he finished 134th on the money list in 2004, he was forced back to qualifying school, where on the final hole he got off with a fine approach shot within two feet of the hole to keep his card for 2005.

In 2005, his great play on the final hole won the FUNAI Classic at Walt Disney World, helping him finish the year with $2,050,068, good enough for 30th on the money leaders list.

“I had I had the knees knocking pretty good on 16, 17 and 18. But I pulled it off and executed some pretty good shots. I held it together and that’s important,’’ Glover said after winning the Open.

In truth, nothing in Glover’s game or makeup was more important than the way he clung to his position with the likes of Mickelson and Woods giving chase. He was unfazed. They had to catch up. They couldn’t. He did not allow it. The other side of that story is that Ricky Barnes did the opposite, starting strong in the tournament, then blowing a lead with which he could have — should have — won.

Know also and appreciate these additional Lucas Glover traits. He works crossword puzzles in no time, reads three books a week, has a good and pretty wife and family who were there to keep him encouraged those last hours. He is modest, and for the record, golfers, for the week, he was 13th in fairways hit, fourth in greens hit, 11th in putting, and eighth in driving.

And, golfers, fans, Lucas Glover bogeyed the first hole of this U.S. Open he won.

There’s hope, eh?