What a long, strange trip it has been for Lucas Glover.
Winning the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black has become the signature victory of four PGA Tour titles since turning pro out of Clemson University in 2001. Among the spoils at the time for Glover was a berth in the Grand Slam of Golf at Port Royal Golf Course on the western tip of Bermuda.
Glover returns this week to Southampton, Bermuda, to compete in the PGA Tour’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship, where he’ll be the only player in the 132-man field with a plaque on the course: “Man, I’ve never been so nervous on a shot.”
The 16th tee at Port Royal Golf Club in Bermuda. (Mark Williams/PGA Tour)
The marker recognizes Glover’s victory in the now-defunct event, which consisted of that season’s four major winners. It sits on the back tee box of the infamous 235-yard par-3 16th hole, which demands a tee shot to a spit of land that practically hangs over the water. Until Tuesday, Glover had only seen the plaque in photos that friends had sent him. He explained that his quote was less about the difficulty of the shot at the Robert Trent Jones Sr. design than teeing off steps away from the South Shore cliff and fearing the potential plunge.
“It’s good to be back. It’s always good to come back to a place where you have had success,” said Glover, whose caddie this week is Steve Lambert Jr., moonlighting from his regular job as the head golf professional at Port Royal. “It’s 13 years ago, so it doesn’t even matter anymore, but it’s always nice to be where you’ve had some success.”
Glover, 42, ended a decade-long victory drought at the 2021 John Deere Classic and last season snuck into the FedEx Cup playoffs, where he had his best result of the year to date at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, finishing tied for third.
“I had a good Playoffs, let’s put it that way. It wasn’t a great year leading up to it, but took advantage of being in Memphis,” he said last week at the CJ Cup in South Carolina. “Yeah, I still feel like I can play out here.”
He returns to a course that is short on the scorecard – at a mere 6,828 yards it is the second-shortest course of those used for Tour events – but long on demands for precision shotmaking. Its winding fairways are banked by blooming oleander and whispering casuarina pines and its hilltop greens afford stunning views of turquoise sea, craggy coral rock formations, swaying palm trees and white-roofed, pastel cottages. The…
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