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Lucas Glover Wins Back-to-Back at FedEx St. Jude Championship after Sudden Death Playoff

With years of putting woes behind him, Glover’s flatstick lead the way during his second PGA Tour victory in two weeks.

Gabrielle Herzig

Lucas Glover Wins Back-to-Back at FedEx St. Jude Championship after Sudden Death Playoff
Lucas Glover Wins Back-to-Back at FedEx St. Jude Championship after Sudden Death Playoff /

Lucas Glover became a back-to-back champion the PGA Tour on Sunday when he defeated Patrick Cantlay in a one-hole sudden-death playoff to capture his sixth career victory at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

Glover, 43, won last week’s Wyndham Championship over Russell Henley to shoot up the FedEx Cup standings and earn a spot in the first of three consecutive playoff events, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. 

MORE: Final prize money from the FedEx St. Jude

With years of grueling putting woes behind him, Glover’s red-hot flatstick lead the way all week, especially when he needed to bounce back from the occasional errant shot. Glover lead the field in strokes-gained scrambling with an 88% up-and-down percentage. 

“You work hard no matter what, whether you’re fighting something or you’re playing great, you just work hard. You never know when it could turn, and it’s turned very quickly for me. Luckily I’ve been in a good frame of mind to take advantage of it,” Glover said to CBS’s Amanda Renner. 

The former U.S. Open champion shot rounds of 66, 64, 66 and a final-round 69 to match Cantlay’s tournament total of 15 under par. 

Glover and Cantlay then headed to the 18th tee to decide the championship after Tommy Fleetwood failed to make birdie at the last to join them. 

Cantlay, the 2021 FedEx Cup champion, was first on the tee. He missed to the left and caught a nasty kick that launched his ball into the water hazard that lines the 448-yard dogleg closing hole. 

Glover, however, found safety in the middle of the fairway. 

Cantlay and Glover then stuck their approach shots to within inches of each other, setting up Cantlay with a perfect chance to steal a read off of his opponent. 

Glover, up first on the 18th green, lagged the 21 foot putt to just 12 inches, putting the pressure on Cantlay to save his par to extend the playoff. 

But despite receiving all the information he could have needed from Glover, Cantlay’s ball barely skirted the hole. 

And with that, Glover was officially a two-time PGA Tour winner in two weeks. 

“It was just keep fighting. The closing holes here aren’t easy birdies. They’re not easy pars, really, under pressure. It was just, keep fighting, stay close, and I was fortunate to get into the playoff. I said yesterday the guns would be coming, and they came. I was just the last man standing this week,” Glover said. 

Glover moves to No. 3 in the FedEx Cup standings with the momentous win. He’s the first PGA Tour player to win in consecutive weeks since Tony Finau won the 3M Open and the Rocket Mortgage Classic in 2022. 

On top of it all, Glover will also make a major jump up another important ranking: The 43-year-old has moved from No. 64 to No. 16 in the U.S. Ryder Cup team rankings in just eight days. 

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Gabrielle Herzig
GABRIELLE HERZIG

Gabrielle Herzig is a Breaking and Trending News writer for Sports Illustrated Golf. Previously, she worked as a Golf Digest Contributing Editor, an NBC Sports Digital Editorial Intern, and a Production Runner for FOX Sports at the site of the 2018 U.S. Open. Gabrielle graduated as a Politics Major from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she was a four-year member and senior-year captain of the Pomona-Pitzer women’s golf team. In her junior year, Gabrielle studied abroad in Scotland for three months, where she explored the Home of Golf by joining the Edinburgh University Golf Club.

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