Former Clemson player Lucas Glover was a shot behind leader Ricky Barnes after their first three holes of Monday's conclusion of the U.S. Open at Long Island's Bethpage Black. Glover, a Greenville native, has dreamed of such a scenario since his youth, when he and his grandfather, former Clemson and NFL football player Dick Hendley, would travel together to the Masters.
In 2006, Glover earned his first invitation to Augusta National, the realization of a life-long ambition for both Glover, his grandfather and his parents, Jimmy and Hershey Glover. The following is a profile of Glover published in The State the week before that Masters debut.
GREEN DREAMS
The State, April 2, 2006
By BOB GILLESPIE
bgillespie@thestate.com
For 10 years they made the annual trip to Augusta, the man and his young grandson. Every April, from the time the boy was 6 until he was 16, they would arrive at Augusta National early on the Saturday of Masters week to watch the best golfers in the world, and to be together.
Always, their routine was the same: watching Nicklaus and Palmer, Norman and Stewart, chipping and putting, then over to the driving range to see shots soar toward distant Washington Road. They would watch early groups teeing off, walk a few holes and then return to Dick Hendley's car to drive back to Greenville and watch the rest of the tournament on television.
There was always a bond between the two, friends and family say. Maybe it was the natural companionship of athletes: Hendley, a member of Clemson's athletics hall of fame and former player with the Pittsburgh Steelers, recognized early his grandson's physical gifts. But there was something else, too: a boy's need for a father figure, and a grandfather's need to provide one.
By the time the youngster was 12, he was a rising star in junior golf. That April, Hendley had the notion that would become a mission.
"I was looking at him," Hendley, now 79, says, "and I thought, 'One day, Luke might be good enough to play here. That would be a dream come true.'"
In Lucas Glover's mind, the same dream was forming.
"I always wanted to play there," he says. "I wanted to hear the announcer saying my name on the first tee. I thought about it the very first time I went there."
Twenty years later, their dream is reality. This week at Augusta National, Glover will play his first Masters, though almost certainly not his last.
The former two-time All-American at Clemson is, at 26, one of professional golf's rising young stars. In 2005 he broke through in his second year on the PGA Tour, winning the Funai Classic at Walt Disney World and more than $2 million, a figure that earned him the No. 30 spot on last year's money list and stamped his ticket for Magnolia Lane.
This week, the Hendley-Glover clan will be in Augusta for the realization of those long-ago fantasies: Lucas and his wife of four months, Jennifer; Hendley and his daughter (and Glover's mother) Hershey and her husband Jimmy Glover (Glover's stepfather). Hendley's wife of 57 years, Lucille, will be the lone absentee -"she can't take the heat anymore," Hershey Glover says - but her thoughts will be there, too.
It will be most special, though, for Glover and Hendley. Asked how long the two have been connected through golf, Hershey Glover laughs. "You trying to make me cry?" she says. "Dad has always been his coach. To have your only son and your dad close like that is special."
But she doesn't claim such status for her father only. There was also Lucas' longtime teacher, who recently died. And there is Jimmy, the only "father" Lucas acknowledges.
Thursday, when Glover steps to the first tee, the entire family will pause to reflect on what a boy can become when he has enough loving footsteps to follow.
THE GOAL: RYDER CUP
Relaxing at Greer's Thornblade Club, his home course, his lanky 6-foot-2, 195-pound frame draped across his chair, Glover is as easy and unpretentious as an old pair of Footjoys. He recalls last October, as he and Jennifer drove toward the Orlando airport shortly after his victory, when he realized his world had changed.
"I was thinking about getting her to her flight and letting everything sink in," he says. "I was thinking about the Tour Championship implications (the top 30 gained entry into the year-ending event), but I hadn't thought what it did for me in '06.
" (Jennifer) said, 'Oh, my gosh; doesn't top 40 (on the money list) get you in the Masters?' Then it kind of hit me, like, 'Oh wow.' "
Wow indeed. Glover's performance in 2005 earned him spots in three of the four majors (he must qualify for the British Open, though that seems likely) and in the winners-only Mercedes Championship in January. It also positioned him for a loftier goal: a berth on this fall's U.S. Ryder Cup team. As of the Players Championship, Glover held the 10th and final automatic spot.
" (In 2006) I want to win again, play well in the majors, get in contention and see what that tastes like," Glover says. "If I do those things, I feel like I've got a pretty good chance to make the Ryder Cup, which is the ultimate goal."
The first step - winning - came late in 2005, but not before Glover came close twice. In Atlanta's BellSouth Classic and at the Zurich Classic in New Orleans, he had chances late, only to finish poorly.
"I look back and figure out how I didn't do it those times," he says, "and then focus on those things. Now I want to get to the winner's circle as many times as I can."
His first visit was, well, adventurous. A shot behind with two holes to play in Orlando, Glover drained a 40-foot birdie putt. Then he made perhaps THE shot of the PGA Tour season, holing out from a bunker for birdie, a 35-yard bomb that left him temporarily slack-jawed, then philosophical.
"You do that and everyone says, 'Oh, he's the luckiest player in the world,' " Glover says. "No one ever sees the ones where the ball hits the wrong side of a tree and bounces deep."
He has known his share of bad bounces, and then some. Fresh out of Clemson in 2001, he shockingly failed at qualifying school to attain any sort of PGA or Nationwide Tour status for 2002. He spent the year hop-scotching among tours, including one that still makes him laugh.
"I did the Tour de Las Americas Q-school, WAY down in Miami," he says, grinning. "I did it right before our Q-school to get ready. I won it (but) never played an event on their tour."
He finished 17th in 2003 on the Nationwide Tour, but in 2004 Glover wound up 134th on the PGA Tour money list and decided to go back through qualifying to try to improve his standing. There, he birdied three of his last four holes (the final hole was a 21/2- footer that "looked like eight feet") to make it on the number for his card.
To call Glover an instant success, then, would be wrong. In fact, his trek to Augusta began so long ago that he relies on his grandfather's stories to chronicle it. It's a story worth hearing; a story about living.
A NATURAL
One day in 1982, Dick Hendley and a friend, Jimmy Glendennon, were chatting in Hendley's front yard as Lucas, 3, played nearby with his newest toy: a cut-down driver that Glendennon, who worked for Titleist, had brought him from Disney World, complete with Mickey Mouse's face on the club's head (after last year's Disney World win, his mother found the club and mounted it in a shadow box for her son).
Out of the corner of his eye, Hendley watched the toddler swing smoothly, almost effortlessly. Intrigued, he teed up a golf ball and watched Lucas swat it 40 yards toward the street.
"I never told him anything, never showed him anything about being on balance," Hendley says. "I told Jimmy, 'I've been trying to do that for 30 years. He's a natural.'"
From that day, the two were practically inseparable. Hendley made sure Lucas, from age 5, had access to the game.
"I'd play golf every day and he'd go with me," Glover says. "He'd pick me up from school, we'd go to the golf course, and then he'd take me home. We'd eat, and sometimes we'd go back."
By the time the youngster was 9, Hendley and the Green Valley Country Club pro had taught him all they knew. So Hendley, not knowing better, asked PGA Tour veteran and Thornblade member Jay Haas to look at Lucas. "Jay said, 'I go to Dick Harmon,' so I took him there," Hendley says.
Harmon was the Houston-based son of 1948 Masters champion Claude Harmon and one of four golf-teaching brothers. He saw potential, but told Hendley to bring Lucas back when his attention span was more developed. By age 12, Glover was making three or four trips a year, soaking up golf like a sponge.
"He made it fun," Glover says of Harmon. "He understood with kids that's what you had to do."
For 14 years, Harmon was Glover's only swing coach. Then in February, Glover visited Houston for a lesson before flying to a tournament. Upon arrival, he learned Harmon had died from complications of pneumonia.
Glover immediately flew back for the funeral and stayed a week with the family. The pain of loss he felt has been eased as the other Harmon brothers - Butch, Billy and Craig - have rallied around him.
"His relationship with Dick was unbelievable. (Dick) was like a second dad to Lucas," says Butch Harmon, former teacher for Tiger Woods. "Lucas was as injured by this whole deal as we were, because he was like one of our family."
Glover lost a "father" but, he says, gained three "uncles." Whoever replaces Dick Harmon as his instructor "will have the same last name," he says. "Butch will be in Augusta, and Billy is caddying for me at Houston. We'll just see."
Says Butch Harmon: "It's been very tough for Lucas, but he's going to get Dick in spirit. He's going to be all right."
FATHER, SON LEARN FROM EACH OTHER
When Jimmy Glover began dating his future wife, Lucas was 8. By the time the couple married, the boy was 11, his golf relationship with his grandfather already set in stone. Glover, a painting contractor who plays "client golf," never tried to force his way into that world.
Instead, Jimmy Glover showed his stepson another world. There were fishing trips and flying kites on the beach; Jimmy introduced Lucas to computers and to the Beatles. Mostly, he was there as Lucas grew into manhood.
Hershey Glover, who, as does her son, declines to talk about Lucas' biological father, states their position simply: "Jimmy is Lucas' father."
Being a father, Jimmy says, has been rewarding. He "never missed a (golf) tournament" and, in the process, came to admire the quiet youngster's intense work ethic.
"He'd practice golf until his hands bled," Jimmy says. "He'd come home at (age) 10 or 12, after three to four hours practicing, do his homework and go practice some more."
As a high school sophomore, Lucas' obsession with golf began to hurt his grades. Jimmy had a solution.
"I woke him at 5 a.m. one Saturday and said, 'We're going to work,' " Jimmy says. "He said, 'Wait, I've got a 9 a.m. tee time.' I said, 'Call and cancel it.' He said, 'I can't do that,' and I said, 'Sure you can. I'll show you how.' "
After a day of hauling paint cans, ladders and the like, Jimmy told Lucas: "You can go back and get your grades up, go to college, or not. But this is what you have to look forward to (if he didn't)." Soon, he says, the grades were back to A's and B's.
Such disciplinary moments were rare, Jimmy says. He praises Lucas' "amazing amount of mature traits": his loyalty, his ability to fit in with any crowd, his no-nonsense directness in conversation.
Ask Jimmy his role in forming those traits, and he demurs. He knows what he has meant to Lucas, though.
"When I first met him, I wanted when he looked around for him to always see my face. I wasn't leaving; I was going to take care of him and his mom. I gave him an anchor so he could feel safe."
In turn, he says, Lucas gave him an anchor, too.
"He's the center of my universe," Jimmy says.
A DAY FOR FAMILY
This week in Augusta, Jimmy plans to watch as much golf as he can. Dick, whose diabetes affects his balance and limits his ability to walk Augusta National, will get around on a scooter. Hershey will keep one eye on her father, the other on her son.
Each has visualized this week, especially Thursday's opening round, for decades.
Charles Warren, Glover's former Clemson teammate, likes his friend's chances. "The golf course sets up perfectly for him," Warren says. "If you look at the short list of guys who could contend, especially first-year guys, he's at the top of that list. I think he's going to do very well."
Jimmy Glover says he will be excited, but he knows this is about Lucas and his grandfather. "It's the culmination of dreaming and working for them both," he says.
Hershey Glover expects to stay cool, for a while. "Nothing will hit me until I see him hit that first shot, or hear him introduced," she says.
There will be unequaled emotions for Hendley, who wondered if he would live to see this quest come to fruition. He recently talked about their long-ago dreams with his grandson.
"We went over the whole thing," Hendley says. "How unbelievable it was that I said what I did, how we wondered if one day he'd be good enough to play in the Masters."
Hendley sighs softly. "You don't know," he says, "how thrilling and exciting it is for me."
Only a father could know that - unless it was someone as close as a father.
In this case, make that several "someones."
BOB GILLESPIE
