Meet the pro golfer who can’t stop scrolling Clemson football message boards

Back in December, a funny thing happened on TigerIllustrated.com , which has covered Clemson sports since 1999 and has a loyal message board community.

The South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame had just announced a new group of inductees, and former Clemson men’s golf star Lucas Glover was in the class. A TI user saw the news, posted about it on the website and offered congratulations.

The post wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary. For decades, college sports fans (especially die-hard football fans) have been migrating to message board websites to swap stories, talk strategy and rejoice or gripe about their favorite teams .

But this poster didn’t congratulate Glover by name.

They referred to him as “JudgeSchmails.”

Then Glover himself replied.

“thank yall,” he wrote one day later.

Glover, 44, is the most successful golfer in Clemson history. He was a three-time All American at the school. He helped lead the Tigers to four straight top 10 NCAA Tournament finishes. As a pro, he has the most PGA Tour wins and major golf championship appearances of any former Clemson golfer.

But he’s also a lifelong Tigers football fan, the grandson of former Clemson and NFL player Dick Hendley and someone who didn’t miss a single home game at Memorial Stadium for 12 years while he was growing up in Greenville.

“I’ve always said I’d watch Clemson play tiddlywinks,” Glover said.

But for a professional golfer who lives out of state, travels frequently and often has to move small logistical mountains to make it to a home or away game, keeping up with Clemson usually means catching up on what he’s missed.

More often than not, the 22-year pro does that by scrolling through the members-only forums of TigerIllustrated.com, where his 2009 U.S. Open championship and 10 Masters appearances and $34 million plus in career winnings fade away.

There, he’s just like any other fan … for the most part.

A loyal subscriber

Glover has been a loyal subscriber to the website since January 2006, and “I’m on there all the time,” he told The State ahead of the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony in Columbia earlier this summer.

His fandom, on its face, isn’t unique. From Dawn Staley and Mike Krzyzyewski to LeBron James and Stephen Curry , there are many pro athletes and coaches who’ve proudly repped their alma maters — or cheered for a team in another different professional sport — in a way they understandably can’t do with their day jobs.

And specific to professional golfers, Glover said, there’s “a bunch of guys” on the PGA Tour who also love college football dearly and indulge in message board culture.

But it’s rare to find someone of Glover’s stature engaging so frequently and openly at such a grassroots level while juggling life on the tour.

Scroll through his page on X (formerly Twitter), and you’ll get a mini-history of Clemson football’s recent rise through the eyes of a fan who saw coach Dabo Swinney ’s program go from struggling to beat its biggest rival to winning two national titles.

In 2013, he sarcastically congratulated South Carolina fans on a four-game winning streak against Clemson while linking to a website that showed the schools’ all-time football record against each other (heavily in the Tigers’ favor).

In 2016, after the Tigers snuck past N.C. State at home, he reminded everyone that, no, fans weren’t rushing the field to celebrate beating an unranked team . They were simply Gathering at the Paw — a win-or-lose tradition that dates back decades .

And a few months later, in January 2017, he was among those wishing the Heisman Trophy got voted on after the season after quarterback Deshaun Watson helped Clemson toppled Alabama in that year’s national championship game .

“Guessing Watson won’t trade this for that Heisman he deserves ,” he wrote.

For over a decade, Glover also kept up with Clemson football happenings through TigerIllustrated.com and did so with minimal fanfare.

He chose the username JudgeSchmails, which is a reference to Judge Elihu Smails, a character in the 1980 golf comedy classic “Caddyshack.” For his profile picture, he used a famous of Frank Howard, the former Tigers football coach, blowing a kiss to the USC crowd after beating the Gamecocks on the road in 1959.

Glover was just like any user. He liked. He commented. He posted. There were rumors about his identity, perhaps enhanced by his cheeky, golf-adjacent username, but never anything of substance. Just the musings of a “typical fan,” Glover said.

As in?

“I hope we win every game, but for some reason I expect us to lose every game,” he said. “I’m that kind of fan. A poor-mouther.”

Then, as Glover first detailed to ESPN last fall for a larger story surrounding pro golf’s obsession with college football , he formally disclosed his identity about four years ago when he saw another user on The West Zone — the website’s main forum, named for a club seating area at Death Valley — claim he knew Glover and his family. JudgeSchmails chimed in and promptly shut that down.

“It was time,” Glover said, laughing. “I had to set something straight.”

Message board ‘support’

Since the big reveal, nothing’s really changed, he said.

Glover, who sits as the No. 70 golfer in this week’s FedEx Cup rankings and is fighting for a playoff spot after missing the cut at last weekend’s Genesis Scottish Open, is still a huge Clemson football fan. He still uses the website. People know who he is, but they don’t freak out.

There’s decorum, even though Glover likes to joke Swinney “probably doesn’t want me around” since the Tigers, he said, have lost each of the past five games he’s attended (including last year’s home overtime thriller vs. Florida State).

Still, the presence of a professional golfer on a message board can lead to some funny contrasts.

Late last summer, Glover had the best two-week stretch of his pro career. As golf season wound down, he improbably won back-to-back PGA Tour events on back-to-back weekends in Greensboro, North Carolina and Memphis, Tennessee in August.

Glover’s wins at the Wyndham Championship and the FedEx St. Jude Championship were widely celebrated, considering he was only the third PGA Tour player in 25 years to win events on back-to-back weekends in his 40s.

Glover had also recently pushed through a frustrating 10-year streak without a single win on the tour from 2011 to 2021.

The outpouring from Clemson fans on social media — and TigerIllustrated — was massive, and Glover heard it loud and clear. On Aug. 6, the same day he won the Wyndham Championship, he posted a note of thanks to the website’s message board.

A week later, after another win, Glover circled back.

“Once again … Thank you for all the kind words and support,” he wrote in a post the day after the FedEx St. Jude Championship. “Go Tigers.”

The post was widely shared on social media and drew over 700 likes — a heartwarming moment for Glover and those he’d been interacting with on the website for years, through a decade-long drought and now two straight wins.

Three months later, though, he was back to regularly scheduled programming. It was November 2023, late in the season, and fans on TigerIllustrated.com were discussing name, image and likeness deals for Clemson football players.

Someone claimed they’d heard Tigers running back Will Shipley was getting paid $1 million in NIL, and the PGA Tour’s biggest Clemson fan resurfaced to roll his eyes.

“I hope whoever said that wasn’t serious,” JudgeSchmails wrote.