Lucas Glover took his shoes off mid-round at the 2026 3M Open, and nobody had a good explanation for a full day. The clip spread fast: a six-time PGA Tour winner walking to the cup in his socks, shoes sitting behind him on the green.

Kevin Kisner had a different reason for bringing it up on his regular ForePlay podcast spot. He wasn’t there just to rib Glover with the rest of the cast. Rule 13.1c, the provision letting players tap down spike marks, is getting stretched further than it was written for, and Kisner made clear the shoes were the smaller story.

“I was like, ‘Dude, we’re about to record. Hop on real quick, and we’ll make fun of this together.’ But he’s tied up till like 2:00. [So] I’ll read you what he said,” Kisner said. “’People behind me b***hing about spike marks, singled me out. An official said something to me. [The] group in front of me had metal on too.’ I said, ‘Can’t we tap down spike marks?’ and he wrote back, ‘Exactly.’ So, I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world.” 

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Kisner also added that he wasn’t convinced from the get-go that Glover took off his shoes to protest AimPoint. The AimPoint narrative was believable because the 46-year-old had a long-standing issue with the technique, having criticized it for slowing down play. However, the real explanation is equally bizarre, if not more.

The six-time PGA Tour winner has been wearing metal spikes for his entire 23-year career on the PGA Tour. And that was the case during Sunday’s final round as well, when he wore FootJoy golf shoes. Despite having worn such shoes for years, the 3M Open was the first time he had ever received any complaints about leaving spike marks on the course. 

For context, spike marks ruin a golf putt by deflecting the ball’s rolling path, changing its speed, or bumping it off line. Shoes with metal spikes create indentations that create tiny bumps, ridges, and tears in the delicate grass surface. However, Lucas Glover himself had pointed out in his response that Rule 13.1c allows players to tap down spike marks.

Even Kisner pointed that out during the podcast and claimed that metal spikes are better than soft spikes for the golf course.

Rule 13.1c traces back to the 2019 Rules Modernization, when the USGA and R&A rewrote the rulebook to speed up play and close inconsistencies that had burned players for years. Before then, golfers could repair ball marks on their line but not spike marks, a distinction that got European Tour pro Simon Dyson put on probation in 2013 after he tapped down a mark mid-round. The rewrite let players fix any damage they found, spike marks included.

Kisner’s “trenching” comment marks the first time a tour name has called this out in public. No PGA Tour official raised the issue before this week, so what started as a fix for one inconsistency now has a name for its own problem.

“In my opinion, the more prevalent problem on the tour is now that you can tap it down,” he added. “Guys are just like trenching from four feet, like how many times do you see this on the way to the hole … If I just tap down like four feet directly to the hole, it’s almost impossible to miss.”

Notably, during the final round of A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, Phil Mickelson intentionally tapped down a patch of thick fescue grass with his foot directly in front of the seventh tee box to clear his line of sight. He was penalized two strokes on the spot for improving his line of play, a violation under the rules at the time. Rule 13.1c doesn’t cover that kind of case; it only applies to repairing damage on the putting green itself, like spike marks and ball marks, not shaping a line off the tee. The Mickelson moment predates the 2019 rewrite entirely and involves a different rule altogether, but it shows the sport has long policed players altering surfaces to their advantage.

For instance, Xander Schauffele used Rule 13.1c during his victory at the 2024 Open Championship. And he was never penalized for the move. British pro Eddie Pepperell even criticized the move and pointed out that players can abuse the rule and get away with it. 

Regardless, while Glover’s case turned out to be about complaints over spike marks, the speculation about his frustration with AimPoint has now sparked a debate.

Actions by Lucas Glover led to Smylie Kaufman criticizing AimPoint

Glover may not have wanted to start a conversation about AimPoint, but what happened at the 3M Open did exactly that. Of course, the incident at the 18th hole is pretty clear by now. But in the aftermath, it sparked conversations among fans and experts alike.

Speaking on the Smylie Show, Smylie Kaufman criticized the way some players use AimPoint around the greens.

“It’s awful, man,” he said, arguing that players are not respecting their competitors’ putting lines. “Where have we gone in the game to where we’re not respecting another player’s through line or just like creating unwarranted traffic around the cup?”

The former PGA Tour player acknowledged that the technique can help players putt better and admitted he would probably use it himself. However, he still made his stance clear, saying, “I just don’t like the optics of it. I don’t like the traffic of it all.”

The real test comes the next time a camera catches a player leaning hard into a mark near the hole. That moment won’t pass unnoticed the way it used to, now that someone from inside the locker room has said the quiet part out loud. A rule built to speed up play never accounted for players using it to buy an edge on short putts, and that gap is now sitting in plain view. What happens next depends less on what happened at TPC Twin Cities and more on whether the habit keeps showing up in front of an audience that’s finally watching for it.