Lucas Glover is on the ride of his life

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Giant rubber golf balls, a pin flag from the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black – Lucas Glover stood in the parking lot and signed everything put in front of him in advance of the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields Country Club. Rory McIlroy, with whom Glover will play the first two rounds here, stood a few feet away, doing the same.

If you are the company you keep, this was very good company, indeed, for the 43-year-old Glover, who after victories the last two weeks (Wyndham Championship, FedEx St. Jude Championship) has become the unlikely story of the FedExCup Playoffs.

Glover was 167th in the FedExCup and 166th in the world going into the Rocket Mortgage Classic at the tail end of June. But with five top-10 finishes in his last starts, including two wins, he’s up to fourth and 30th, respectively. He’s an overnight success 10 years in the making.

“I think it's just kind of the story of being stubborn the right way and persevering,” said Glover, who toiled for more than a decade to capture his third and fourth TOUR events but needed just two weeks to win Nos. 5 and 6. “Just one of those typical sports kind of comeback stories, just head down, grind on, and keep at it and keep your goal in your sights.”

Typical? Well, erm. Not exactly.

Had you convened a panel of experts a month ago to ask what might happen in these FedExCup Playoffs, you might have heard about Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and McIlroy, who have been playing hot potato with the top spot in the Official World Golf Ranking and now make up Nos. 1, 2 and 3, respectively, in the FedExCup standings.

Anyone who didn’t mention those three might have gone with Max Homa, Wyndham Clark, Keegan Bradley, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day or Brian Harman. Maybe Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele or Justin Thomas would get hot at the right time.

Glover would have been fine with this. He’s not flashy and has the same old-school move he’s had his whole life: a simple back and through with a pronounced lag that produces a consistent strike. Homa has said Glover’s shots even sound different coming off the clubface, which is all well and good if you’re a connoisseur of such things. He just couldn’t wiggle in a 4-footer.

Or so we thought. But something big was happening this summer, a subtle thing that was lost in the noise in what has been an especially noisy time in golf.

Glover finished T4 at the Rocket Mortgage on July 2; the preternaturally popular Fowler won. Glover finished T6 at the John Deere Classic and fifth at the Barbasol Championship, but the people’s choice McIlroy captured the Genesis Scottish Open with wild birdies on 17 and 18, and Harman regaled the British press with his six-shot victory at The Open Championship.

Glover was trending; no one was paying him any mind.

We now know that he was making some subtle but important tweaks. With a nudge from putting guru Brad Faxon, he had switched to a broom-handle style putter and taught himself how to use it partly by watching YouTube videos of Adam Scott and Scott McCarron.

Finally, Glover began working with Jason Kuhn, a former Navy SEAL who helped him change his mentality on the greens. Calling the SEALs was a move straight out of the "Jack Reacher" novels Glover used to read, and while golf rarely imitates a Tom Cruise movie, you can’t argue with the results. Glover was 12th in Strokes Gained: Putting, gaining 2.8 strokes on Sunday alone, in capturing the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He one-putted his first four greens Sunday, needed just 25 putts for the final round, and led the field in scrambling for the week.

“(Kuhn) turned my mindset from kind of the typical ‘breathe through it and stay calm’ and all that, which was not possible with what I was dealing with, and he basically taught me how to more attack it and wage war against it instead of letting it consume you,” Glover said. “I've been able to do a good job of that, and it's been frankly a different mantra almost every week.

“Regardless, it's more of an aggressive take on it instead of a fearful take on it.”

Oddly, Glover’s missed the cut at the 3M Open last month also helped his confidence. Matt Wallace, a playing partner who had seen Glover at his yippy worst, said he looked transformed. Glover took it as further confirmation that his changes were working. He hasn’t lost since.

“I can honestly say I never thought I wouldn't win again,” he said. “I didn't think it would be two in a row. I didn't know if it would be a FedEx event. But I never thought I wouldn't win again. I've always said, if it gets to that point, it is probably time to hang them up. But I just knew if I could figure this putting thing out that I'd be right back where I wanted to be.”

After his media obligations Wednesday, which spanned several print, radio and television interviews and took up the better part of an hour, Glover chatted with Brendon Todd on the practice green before heading to the parking lot and signing autographs over a metal barricade.

Finally, he signed the last item and turned toward his courtesy car, when a woman’s voice cried out from behind him: “Lucas, could you sign my shirt?”

Glover’s shoulders slumped, and he turned around.

“I’m just kidding,” the woman, a uniformed police officer, said with a laugh.

“That’s good,” Glover said, laughing in kind. “You got me.”

With that he was off for a quiet afternoon with his new read, a novel called “Mad Honey” that The Washington Post calls, “Alternately heart-pounding and heartbreaking.”

From his U.S. Open triumph at Bethpage to his odyssey with the yips, Glover’s travails once fit that description, but now he’s writing a coda to his career that might have strained credulity. The BMW Championship, the FedExCup trophy and a possible spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team hang in the balance, and after all the plot twists of the last two weeks, we’re ready to believe anything.