Forty-five-year-old Lucas Glover has been around the block and has a better perspective on the professional game than most.
He won the U.S. Open in 2009, conquering a rain-swept Bethpage Black while fending off Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. His next victory came in 2011 at the Wells Fargo Championship, but then he encountered a decade-long drought, which can be attributed to injuries, slumps, and issues in his personal life. This is all to say that Glover has been at the pinnacle of the sport, but he has plummeted to its lowest points too. He knows what it means to be a major champion, yet he was also a journeyman struggling to keep his PGA Tour card many times over.
That’s why his perspective matters.
Given that a deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund is reportedly “close,” Glover offered a solution for the tour’s potential actions regarding top LIV golfers. The former Clemson Tiger said the tour should extend an olive branch and invite these players to its Signature Events.
“If you’re going to put a top-end event, there’s some top-end, huge talent playing LIV,” Glover said on his Sirius XM Radio Show on Thursday.
“If we’re going to have a for-profit money-making organization, then we’re going to need those guys, and golf needs them too. If that’s unification, if that’s playing head-to-head, whatever they come up with, the best players in the world need to be playing.”
Glover has previously trashed the Signature Events, the eight limited-field tournaments with massive purses. The tour established these to cater to its stars, television sponsors, and audiences—but they also gave the journeyman tour player the ole ‘Heisman’ shove, distancing itself from those players and making it harder for those stars to compete among the best.
Hence, Glover believes that the tour should invite players like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, and Cameron Smith to participate. It would help create more intrigue among fans and sponsors. It would also lead to more drama.
Glover has also advocated for larger fields in Signature Events.
“It should be a fuller field if you’re putting up $22 to $25 million for one of these events, or maybe even more, who knows, but limiting the fans and limiting the TV audience to 70 to 80 players, it really limits the storylines,” Glover said.
“It limits the drama. It limits the overall competition, in my opinion, because the more bodies, the more golfers, the more competition. That’s just common sense. And on top of that, you take it one more level. It’s better for the fans on site, because then you get golf all day.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
