Lucas

Herbert

Herbert is one of LIV Golf’s younger players, turning professional in 2015 and collecting three wins on the DP World Tour and one on the PGA Tour before joining LIV Golf.

His first success was at the 2020 Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour and it came in dramatic fashion after he started the final day six shots off the lead.

With ruthless consistency he charged up the leaderboard, before beating Christiaan Bezuidenhout at the second playoff hole.

Herbert also won the Irish Open the following year.

That was July 2021 and within three months Herbert was celebrating his maiden victory on the PGA Tour, winning the Bermuda Championship.

It was just his third event on the Tour.

At Port Royal everything fell into place and Herbert held his nerve to shoot a final-round 69 to beat future LIV Golf stars Patrick Reed and Danny Lee by one stroke.

His fourth and final pro victory before joining LIV Golf came on the DP World Tour in April 2023, where another playoff win landed him the ISPS Handa Championship in Japan.

That included firing an impressive 63 on Day 2 and winning another playoff over Aaron Cockerill.

Herbert has appeared in all four majors but says his one outing at the Masters stands tall in his memory, despite missing the cut in his debut.

“Augusta, there’s just something special about the place, whether you are top 10 or finish dead last,” he says.

That same year he achieved his best result in the majors with a T13 at the PGA Championship. He has played six PGA Championships, five Opens and appeared four times in the U.S. Open.

Before leaving the PGA Tour to move to LIV Golf, Herbert had achieved a best placing of 40th in the Official World Golf Ranking in January 2022.

With Lucas Herbert on board, Ripper celebrated wins in Adelaide and Singapore in 2024, and in September’s showdown in Dallas, he birdied four of the last five holes to help them clinch the 2024 LIV Golf Team Championship.

It is the team aspect that he has enjoyed the most and feels it brings a new level of excitement and drama to the game.

“That team environment, I just I don’t think anyone really understands what that means, what that feels like and how much you really care about it until you’re involved in it,” Herbert told Fairway To Heaven, LIV Golf’s official podcast.

“On your own, if you were tied 25th on a Sunday with five holes to play, ordinarily there wouldn’t be a lot of interest in that.

“But when the team’s tied for second and every birdie matters and you’re trying not to make any bogeys to hurt the guys, all of a sudden those last five holes become more nerve-wracking than in the individual tournaments.”

The team event in Dallas concluded a powerful second half to Herbert’s debut LIV Golf season as he had achieved three T6 finishes in the final six events to earn 25th place in the individual standings.

Having not touched a guitar since primary school, Herbert rekindled his interest in playing during the Covid lockdowns and a new love affair began.

By the time the LIV Golf assembled for the final individual event of 2024 in Chicago, Herbert admitted he had just added another guitar to his growing collection.

“I think I’ve got eight now,” he told Fairway To Heaven.

“A lot of the time my brain just needs something to do, I struggle to sit there and not do anything.

“So it’s a great distraction for me to get away from my phone, to get away from life and do something that’s quite creative, quite artistic.”

Herbert is not married. His home base in the U.S. is Orlando, Florida, with girlfriend Erica, who he met on a dating app.

“She was in marketing before she moved to Florida,” Herbert says.

“Now she’s traveling round with me, she did a certificate in personal training and is really into fitness and loves giving programs to help people.

“She’s probably fitter than me.”

Herbert has a popular Instagram account where he posts regular updates about LIV Golf tournaments and also gives us a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes with his teammates at 2024 Team Champions Ripper GC.  

Herbert has a reputation as a dead-eye on the greens and amateur players are keen to copy his putting grip.

The key to the address is to keep the grip pressure light so the pace of the stroke will be slow and easy.

The stroke itself is more of a sweep, with two counts going back and one forward, so that the putter collects the ball rather than clipping it.

At the start of his career he hit lots of draws and he has worked hard to complement that with some fades.

With the driver, he tends to lean back a little to the right before launching his backswing but is physically strong and has a very athletic approach through his hips and knees, flexible and powerful as he swings through, generally gaining a good distance with the ball.