Tiger Woods & Lucas Glover: “Yippee-ki-yay”

Watching the Farmer’s Insurance Open this weekend we got to see some faces that haven’t been near the top of the leaderboard for awhile.

Charles Howell III, Nick Watney, J.J. Henry and he of the great nickname, Johnny Vegas all got some television time as they tried to win at Torrey Pines.

Another player that got some TV time, and he wish he hadn’t was Lucas Glover. Glover struggled mightily with his putter and yipped his way to a 77 that dropped him out of contention. 

It was painful to watch his stabby stroke that had no back swing and poked at the ball like it was the first time he ever putted.

Nick Faldo and Jim Nantz were quick to point out another case of the yips had reared its ugly head.

Glover has joined Tiger Woods who now possesses the most infamous case of the yips in golf history.

Tiger and Lucas have developed the one ailment that frightens each and every golfer: the yips.

I thought it funny that this week these two golfers have now been paired together as owning a case of the yips.

Woods and Glover will forever be paired together for me. It wasn’t long ago that I spent a long day with them as I walked inside the ropes with them at the Deutsche Bank Championship. 

Oh the times were so different then.

Glover had just won his first major, the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. Woods finished T6 and it was an amazing finish. I caught Glover a few days later at The Travelers when his buddies smashed a shaving cream pie in his face as he teed off in the pro-am. Glover was basking in his glow of his first major.

Woods had cemented his legacy even deeper with his ’08 U.S. Open win on a fractured leg with a torn ACL. And he had rounded into healthy form in ’09.

By the time I got to spend the day with him he had already won four times that season. And his four previous starts were 1,1,2,T2. He was hot. After his T11 at the Deutsche Bank he went on to win the next week at the BMW and earned a second at the Tour Championship to claim the FedEx Cup Championship.

They were heady times for those two. Now? Not so much.

Thanksgiving 2009 was the start of Tiger’s downfall. The scandal knocked Woods off his pedestal and some say damaged his psyche so much that his poor play may still be a result of all that was taken out of him by that episode. 

Glover had his own problems since Bethpage Black. Personal problems off the course and injuries took their toll on Glover.

Since 2009 he has had one win in 2011 and just six top tens. His T24 this week has him 506th in the world rankings.

Woods hasn’t had it that bad. Of course ’10 and ’11 were wash outs but in 2012 he won three times and in 2013 his five wins garnered him the Player of the Year. But still no major.
Then in ’14 injuries limited him to seven starts and that brings us here: 2015 with a new coach, a new swing and a brand new case of the yips.

The two golfers that I followed around that Sunday are long gone. Both ill with a affliction that has taken down many a golfer.

The putting yips for Glover and the chipping yips for Woods.

My how the times have changed.