Is Lucas Glover a Ryder Cup certainty after FedEx St. Jude Championship victory?
He’s won both the Wyndham Championship and the FedEx St. Jude Championship, but will Lucas Glover be on the plane to Rome?
Lucas Glover is showing what could be the form of his life in a period of huge Ryder Cup ramifications.
The 43-year-old added a win at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to his Wyndham Championship title by beating Patrick Cantlay in a sudden-death playoff at TPC Southwind.
Having made the FedEx Cup Playoffs via the final event of the PGA Tour regular season, Glover is now fourth in the standings and contending for the lucrative season-long crown.
Glover could be set for a Ryder Cup debut that appeared unthinkable when he sat 166th in the world rankings at the end of June, without playing in a major this year too.
The American was asked if earning a spot on Zach Johnson’s team crossed his mind after winning in Memphis:
“About 15 minutes ago,” he said.
“I think I’ve never made it, and I want to”
Unless Glover was to complete a sensational hattrick at the BMW Championship, his most likely route to Marco Simone could be via a captain’s pick.
Scottie Scheffler and Wyndham Clark have both already qualified for the Ryder Cup via the American points list.
A game of inches.@Lucas_Glover_ secures victory @FedExChamp after Patrick Cantlay narrowly misses his par putt on the first playoff hole. pic.twitter.com/GQSKfLKDqB
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 14, 2023
Major champions Brian Harman and Brooks Koepka, along with Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele make up the rest of the current top six following the first FedEx Cup Playoffs event.
Be it a captain’s pick or an automatic spot for the man from Greenville, Glover says he would integrate well within the US team that’s aiming to win on away soil for the first time since 1993.
“Right now, yes. [I’m] playing pretty good golf, and I think I’d be pretty good in the team room and be a good partner, so yeah, absolutely I would,” he added.
It wasn’t long ago when Glover disappointingly failed to qualify for the US Open, around the time he said: “It was hard to go to the range on some days.”
A decade-long bout with the yips led to a winless run on the PGA Tour of the same length, but he holed a number of crucial putts to topple Cantlay, Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood to continue his remarkable streak.
“If you would have told me this three months ago, I’d tell you you’re crazy,” the American admitted.
“But at the same time, if you asked me legitimately did I think I was capable, I’d say yes, even then.
“It’s just one of those sad ways athletes are wired. We always believe in ourselves no matter how bad it is.
“I never gave that up, but like the middle of May, it was hard to go to the range some days and hard to work. But we pushed through and did it anyway.”
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Matt Coles
Mention a European country, and Matt will tell you which resorts make the National Club Golfer Top 100s: European Resorts list. He might even throw in who designed the golf course and how many rooms the hotel has got at each one…
Matt got into the game of golf from a young age, following his old man to the local golf club. He fell for the sport, and now can’t seem to go a day without thinking about how to improve his game (Thanks Dad!). Matt has been a member of Howley Hall GC in Leeds since 2020, and is just about managing to maintain a single-figure handicap. He likes to remind people that he once broke 75, but won’t tell people that it was on a shortened course during the winter.
He moved to Leeds after graduating from the University of Central Lancashire with a First Class Honours degree in Sports Journalism. Matt joined NCG after almost five years travelling the world with the Professional Squash Association, working on events in all four corners of the globe.
Matt currently plays a Cobra King LTDx driver and RadSpeed 3-wood. TaylorMade monopolise the rest of his bag, with a SIM UDI, M5 irons and both Milled Grind and HI-TOE wedges, along with a Monza Redline putter. He uses a Vice Pro Plus golf ball, because he’s a bit different…
Away from golf, Matt is a Manchester United fan, and a keen runner, having ran the Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon (his first and possibly last), in May 2023.
