We are halfway through the John Deere Classic in Silvis, Illinois, and Lucas Glover is alone at the top of the leaderboard. Behind him, allegedly giving chase, are Max Homa and Chris Gotterup. I say "allegedly" because when I look at the field this weekend, I do not see a pursuit. I see a retreat. I see a 46-year-old man who understands the value of suffering quietly exposing the rot at the heart of professional golf.
I am not going to sugarcoat this: this league has a problem. The PGA Tour has spent the last decade entirely focused on the wrong metrics. We have raised a generation of golfers who believe that swing speed, apex height, and adequate hydration matter more than character. But you look at Lucas Glover out there—sweating through a cotton polo, grinding out pars in the Midwestern humidity without once checking a launch monitor—and you realize exactly what we have lost.
The John Deere Classic is not supposed to be a beauty pageant. It is named after a piece of heavy agricultural machinery. It is played in a town called Silvis, which sounds like a place where you have to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to mine for gravel. This is a blue-collar tournament for blue-collar millionaires. But look at the guys trailing Glover. Look at Max Homa. Homa is a tremendous talent, sure, but he is funny on the internet. He makes jokes on social media. Do you think Jack Nicklaus was making jokes? Do you think Ben Hogan cared about his engagement metrics? When Hogan had a bad round, he walked into the woods and stared at a tree until the tree apologized. That is a winning culture.
Then you have Chris Gotterup, who routinely drives the ball 320 yards. The modern analyst will tell you this is a competitive advantage. I call it a moral failing. Hitting the ball over all the hazards completely bypasses the struggle of the game. If you are not laying up into the thickest part of the fescue just to test your own resolve, you are not playing golf. You are just playing fetch with yourself. Glover understands this. He doesn't hit it past the trouble; he hits it near the trouble so he can look the trouble in the eye and let it know he isn't afraid.
I was up in the booth on Thursday, looking down at the driving range, and I was physically sick to my stomach. I saw twenty different twenty-somethings standing behind TrackMan machines, staring at iPads, waiting for a computer algorithm to tell them if they hit the ball well. They need a machine to validate their swing path. They are entirely disconnected from the earth. They do not know how to feel the wind; they only know how to read the wind vector data from a Bluetooth anemometer.
I asked the tour brass about this disturbing trend toward comfort, and their response only proved my point.
I think Lucas just found a really nice rhythm with his irons today, and the softer greens definitely rewarded aggressive approach shots.
"Softer greens." "Rhythm." Listen to yourselves. The greens are too soft because the groundskeepers are coddling the turf, just like the tour is coddling the players. Back in my day, the greens were like putting on a frozen driveway, and if your approach shot was too aggressive, the ball bounced into the parking lot and you had to play it off the windshield of a Buick. Now we have "wellness" executives celebrating the fact that the grass is accommodating. It is a disgrace.
And do not even get me started on the schedule. We are now hearing whispers of load management creeping into the fairway. Guys taking weeks off because their lower backs are "tight" after walking on manicured grass for four days. Have you ever seen a farmer take a week off because he had poor spinal rotation? Of course not. Glover played last week, he is playing this week, and if you asked him to play a third tournament on Monday in a parking lot using only a 7-iron, he would do it without issuing a press release about his fatigue.
The equipment companies are just as complicit. Look at the shoes these kids are wearing today. They look like pillows. They are engineered to absorb shock and reduce fatigue. Why are we trying to reduce fatigue? Fatigue is the only honest umpire left in sports. If your feet do not feel like they have been put through a meat grinder by the 14th hole, you have not earned the right to putt for birdie. Glover wears shoes that look like they were purchased at a hardware store in 1996, and that is why he has a one-stroke lead.
I remember playing in the 1988 Tri-County JV Invitational. I had a blister the size of a silver dollar on my right heel, and my 3-wood had a bent shaft because I had slammed it in a car door out of pure, unadulterated passion. I didn't ask for a biomechanical analysis. I wrapped my foot in electrical tape, adjusted my stance to accommodate the bent steel, and shot a 94 that felt like a 68. I relied on intangibles. I relied on grit. These kids today would have withdrawn and scheduled an MRI.
The John Deere Classic concludes on Sunday. If Max Homa or Chris Gotterup manage to catch Lucas Glover, the media will call it a thrilling comeback. But I will know the truth. I will know that the victory is hollow, built on a foundation of soft spikes, high-launch drivers, and adequate hydration.
If Glover holds on, it will not just be a win for him. It will be a desperate, necessary reprimand to an entire generation of athletes who have forgotten that sports are supposed to be miserable. In fact, if the PGA Tour had any backbone left at all, they wouldn't even hand the winner a trophy on Sunday evening. They would hand him the keys to a commercial combine harvester and tell him the back nine needs to be tilled before sundown.