Players Championship
Players 2025: With the help of 3 chip-ins, 45-year-old Lucas Glover shoots a 71 for the ages
Logan Bowles
PONTE VEDRA BEACH — It was a round that began with a bogey and ended with two double bogeys over the last four holes, yet when Lucas Glover tallied up the rest of the strokes, he was thrilled with the resulting number. On a Saturday afternoon at TPC Sawgrass where the wind gusted up to 25 mph, his one-under 71, which placed him in the final group on Sunday, felt more like a 65.
"If you would have told me this morning when I got up I shot one under today I'd have taken it and not played, for sure," Glover said.
That would have been the easy route, though, a route Glover isn't very familiar with. Nothing was easy about winning the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, which remains the 45-year-old's crowning achievement. Nothing was easy about snapping a decade-long victory drought at the 2021 John Deere Classic, which he backed up two years later with two more victories at the 2023 Wyndham Championship and 2023 FedEx St. Jude, wins that came on back-to-back weeks, which made him just the third golfer in his 40s in PGA Tour history to accomplish that feat. Easy is not in his vocabulary.
Things got very difficult for Glover at the par-4 15th, where he was just moments removed from watching playing partner Will Zalatoris absolutely implode at the haunted house that is TPC Sawgrass' 14th hole. Zalatoris stood on 14 tee one off the lead of J.J. Spaun. He walked off the green in a tie for ninth after making a disastrous snowman that served as the catalyst for an epic ejection. He doubled the next, as did Glover, who was also just one off the lead on 15 tee.
Glover bounced back in style at 16, ripping a low draw down the middle of the fairway and then waiting for the perfect wind to take a whack at the par-5 green in two. He was just long and left. Then he holed out for eagle, his third chip-in from off the green of the day, a shot that did not garner nearly enough applause as it should have. Back to 11 under in an instant.
Then came the infamous 17th, where countless balls had already found the drink and sent players to the drop zone with their shoulders shrunk. Glover and Zalatoris were not immune to the chaos, the former's ball spinning off the front edge into the water and the latter's bounding on the back portion of the green and into the water, too. An In-N-Out double-double. Glover back to nine under, Zalatoris now completely out of the tournament at three under.
"I've been there, for starters," Glover said when asked about keeping the blinders on while Zalatoris faded. "I've been that guy that's doing it. You don't say anything. You just stay in your little bubble and leave him alone and shake his hand and tell him to shake it off when you're done.
"I've been that guy. There's nothing you can do, nothing you can say. You just go about your business."
A business-like par followed for Glover at 18, where another piercing draw, this time with a wood, found the fairway and set him up with an iron off the short stuff. His specialty. He played a beauty that rode the wind and came to rest just off the back of the green. A solid birdie effort allowed him to tap-in for a hard-earned 71. A professional round from a man who has been in this profession for 24 years.
"I think the hardest thing is kind of picking your spots," he said. "You catch a downwind par 5 or something, All right, I can go get this one. Or, conversely, you catch 4, which is a lot of times a birdie hole, you catch that one into the wind like today you're like, all right, I've got to kind of be careful here, or more so than usual.
"Then bad things happen, and they're going to happen to everybody. All right, that happens. Instead, if it was perfectly calm and you make two doubles in the last four holes, I'd be spitting mad, but it just happened."
Glover added another key—don't let the conditions get to you, something that only comes with experience. Zalatoris, who does have a decent amount of experience already, seemed to let it get to him after the catastrophe on 14, that's if the resulting six over in four holes stretch to finish is any indication.
"If you don't let it get to you, you've got a better chance of surviving," Glover said. "Which is kind of my mindset when it's like this."
A mindset that has served the six-time PGA Tour winner, the walking definition of a seasoned vet, quite well. He'll need more of that on Sunday, when winds from 10 to 20 mph are expected and some rain is in the forecast. It will be a battle. It will require some guts and guile. Glover wouldn't have it any other way.