A Fresh Start for Bill Glasson

IF YOU HAD SEEN Bill Glasson back in the 1980s, you might have mistaken him for a skinny Charley Hoffman. Glasson had long, curly blond locks. Before joining the PGA Tour in 1983, he was a two-time All-American at Oral Roberts University.

I read at GolfWRX.com that the “dude never wore shoes when he played [golf]” while growing up in Fresno, California. Glasson looks more like a surfer than a golfer in a 1970s photo taken from a high-school yearbook.

Turning 50 at the end of April, Glasson is one of the lesser-known players who has joined the Champions Tour this season. Steve Lowery is another. Both are playing in this week’s AT&T Championship in San Antonio, Texas.

Glasson was a good player who won seven times in a 12-year span on the PGA Tour. His best finish in a major was a T-4 in the 1995 U.S. Open, and he amassed nearly $7 million in career winnings.

I wrote about Blake Adams’s medical troubles earlier this year, but Adams has nothing on Glasson. Bill had a respectable career despite enduring 19 surgeries on all parts of his body, including his elbow, sinuses, knee, lip, forearm and lower back. By the time he reached his 40s, physical problems limited his play on the PGA Tour.

Now he’s back on the second-chance circuit. In 11 Champions Tour events, Glasson has made 10 cuts (with two sixth-place finishes) and is 63rd on the money list.

−The Armchair Golfer

2010 Crowne Plaza Invitational TV Schedule and Tournament Notes

THE 2010 CROWNE PLAZA INVITATIONAL is underway at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. Jeff Overton, Jason Bohn and Blake Adams share the first-round lead at 7 under.

Purse: $6.2 million
Winner’s share: $1.116 million
Defending champion: Steve Stricker

The field
The course
Tee times
The live report
Tournament news
Tournament website

2010 Crowne Plaza Invitational Leaderboard

TV SCHEDULE

Nine hours of weekend TV coverage are on tap for the 2010 Crowne Plaza Invitational.

Fri, 5/28:
GOLF 3p - 6p ET

Sat, 5/29:
CBS 3p - 6p ET

Sun, 5/30:
CBS 3p - 6p ET

PGA Tour radio coverage

−The Armchair Golfer

Golf Was Last Resort for Blake Adams

I GUESS WHEN YOU exhaust all your other sports options—and bust up your body in the process—you can always turn to golf. That’s been the case for Blake Adams.

Adams is the cat who played in the final group with winner Jason Day at the HP Byron Nelson Championship and finished in a tie for second. He’s a 34-year-old rookie on the PGA Tour who competed in seemingly every sport but golf until his body wouldn’t let him. He became a golf professional at the ripe old age of 25.

“I was better at football, baseball, basketball growing up,” Adams said at the Byron Nelson, “and golf was something I did in the summertime and something that I always had some success at but it just wasn’t my sport. But after you tear your rotator cuff twice your baseball career is pretty much done, and football, too.”

Not that golf is easy for Blake. The man has a thick medical file. “I wake up like I’m 80 … I creak and crack,” he said.

Adams has the arthritis of a 60-year-old. Plus three bone spurs, a bulging disk in his back and a cyst. There’s more. He was also told he needs new hips. He has broken his left ankle and nearly every finger on his left hand. I’ve surely missed a few things. Did I mention he’s 34? Goodness gracious.

SI’s Gary Van Sickle called Adams “Tin Cup” and wrote that “he lives in a small town in south Georgia where he practices by hitting balls on a dirt road and shagging them himself with the help of his Labrador retriever.” I like that. (Hey, I wonder if his Lab is that blind, three-legged dog named Lucky.)

The rookie is just glad to be playing on the PGA Tour and cashing checks like the fat one from the Byron Nelson. About his health woes, Blake said, “I don’t know what’s next, but we’ll just fight through it whatever happens.”

I’m sure he will. And if golf doesn’t work out, there’s always billiards.

−The Armchair Golfer