Lucas Glover is last man standing at U.S. Open

Lucas Glover didn’t just win the U.S. Open on Monday. He won golf’s first Bataan Death March.

This event took five days to finish, seemed like a month, and left one question burning in the minds of players and fans alike: What day is this again?

When Glover dropped in his final three-foot putt, assuring his historic victory with a final round of 73, he made a half-hearted fist pump, shook a few hands and headed off to the scorer’s room.

Oh, he was happy all right. “I didn’t have enough energy left to do anything wild,” he said. “I was done.”

Glover was the last man standing.

His four-under-par 276 was worth $1.35 million, perhaps not enough in an event that was drenched by rain, had players stopping and starting more times than a ’62 Chevy, had players and fans trudging up and down hills through high grass, mud and slop, and was capped off by swirls of unpredictable wind.

Sunscreen salesmen were seen lining up at the welfare window.

Bethpage Black, the public course they played on, is such a beast that there are signs all around, warning that only the best players should play it. That was before the U.S. Golf Assn. tinkered with it to make things even tougher. Had the rain not softened greens enough to allow the golfers to fire at the pin for a day or so, players would have needed psychologists more than caddies.

Every tournament from now on should be a lollipop for Glover. He’d be unbeatable on TV’s “Survivor.”

Glover, unheralded and carrying a middle-of-the-pack status, had won once before on the tour -- when he chipped in at the last hole of the 2005 Funai tournament at Disney World. However, unheralded does not translate to poor. Glover has won nearly $8 million since he got his card in 2004.

This was his fourth U.S. Open, and the first time he made the cut.

He is 29, a perfect golfing tower at 6 feet 2 and 195 pounds. He lives in Greenville, S.C., was a two-time All-American at Clemson, was inducted into the university’s athletic Hall of Fame in 2007, and has a Southern drawl that slightly belies a man who is both scholarly and intense.

He reads a couple of books a week -- “Any murder mystery; Clive Cussler is probably my favorite,” he said -- and that voracious reading translates to a prodigious vocabulary, at least according to his caddie.

“He can do a crossword puzzle faster than I can brush my teeth,” Dan Cooper said.

Glover has a quick sense of humor, with an occasional nice turn of phrase.

“Maybe this will be a springboard,” he said of his win, “and maybe this will be it. Some of us are early bloomers, some late bloomers, and some always bloomers, in Tiger’s case.”

He’s a New York Yankees fan who said he got that way by watching Don Mattingly. Cooper said that when the situation got especially tense during the final round, they talked baseball.

“We said it was the bottom of the ninth inning,” Cooper said.

Glover left the tour for six months last year out of frustration. He said he was unhappy that, no matter how hard he worked at his game, he wasn’t getting results. He said he was taking that anger home with him.

“I took time off,” he said, “and the point of it was to get away, to figure out why I got like I got. I wasn’t patient, I had a bad attitude and my expectations were through the roof.”

Despite lowered expectations, underdog Glover, playing in the same twosome with bigger underdog Ricky Barnes, won out in a dripping-with-drama four-man dash.

Phil Mickelson, No. 2 in the world and the people’s choice here once Tiger Woods’ charge fizzled, made a spectacular eagle on No. 13 to tie Glover for the lead at four under.

David Duval, once No. 1 in the world -- now No. 882 and with a comeback story quickly embraced by New York fans -- made a birdie at No. 16 for a share of the lead at three under.

Glover fought back with a birdie of his own on No. 16, getting the lead back at four under.

Mickelson and Duval both bogeyed No. 17, giving Glover a two-shot lead. Then, as it almost always does at the U.S. Open, it came down to No. 18, the 72nd hole of the tournament.

Mickelson, finishing two groups in front of Glover and Barnes, barely missed a birdie putt that would have put him back at three under and would have turned up the heat on Glover.

Next came Duval’s birdie attempt to get back to three under, similar in line and distance to Mickelson’s 30-footer. It also missed.

Back on the elevated 18th tee -- moved forward on this day so the hole would play 364 yards and players would have to decide whether to try to drive past the bunkers on both sides to within 40 yards of the pin or hit an iron safely short of them -- Glover watched Duval’s putt miss, took out his six-iron and hit to 150 yards. Barnes slugged the driver to 70.

Glover lofted a nine-iron to just off the back of the green, putt-able, but 45 feet away. Barnes hit the green, 20 feet closer.

The situation was simple: If Barnes sank his putt, he would force Glover to two-putt to win, no easy thing from where Glover was.

Glover putted first and rolled his ball expertly to three feet -- close but certainly a knee knocker, especially if Barnes made his.

Then Barnes made the best putt of the three challengers -- but it barely slid past the hole. Glover had two putts to win, a gimme for almost anybody from that close.

“My grip was a little shaky,” said Glover, whose ranking will go from 71st to 18th.

But his ball hit the bottom of the cup and the New York crowd, which had craved Mickelson and adopted Duval, now loved Glover.

Glover, too tired to do much else, kept it all in perspective. Asked afterward what it meant to be on the same trophy with the likes of Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Woods, Glover drawled that he hoped he wouldn’t downgrade the trophy.

It should be the other way around. The others should be proud to be listed with the man who came to Bethpage Black in 2009 and lived to tell about it.

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bill.dwyre@latimes.com

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U.S. Open

*--* 276 (-4)--$1,350,000 Lucas Glover: 69-64-70-73 278 (-2)--$559,830 Phil Mickelson: 69-70-69-70 David Duval: 67-70-70-71 Ricky Barnes: 67-65-70-76 279 (-1)--$289,146 Ross Fisher: 70-68-69-72 280 (E)--$233,350 Tiger Woods: 74-69-68-69 Soren Hansen: 70-71-70-69 Hunter Mahan: 72-68-68-72 *--*