The sports-loving youngster who turned to golf after a serious knee injury and then learned the game while working at a Fresno municipal golf course fashioned a highly successful career on the PGA and Champions tours.

Overcoming numerous injuries and surgeries, the graduate of Fresno’s McLane High School won seven PGA Tour events and teamed with Pat Bradley to win the 1989 JC Penney Classic, which paired top men’s and women’s professionals.

At 5-foot-11 and 175 pounds, Glasson was one of the tour’s longest hitters throughout his career and played his best on some of America’s toughest courses.

A two-time All-America selection at Oral Roberts University, Glasson joined the PGA Tour in 1984 and led the tour in driving distance that season. In 1985, he won the Kemper Open by a stroke, shooting a final-round 66 at the famed Congressional Country Club in Potomac, Md.

It was all systems go for Glasson in the latter part of 1988 as he won the B.C. Open in September and the Centel Classic in November, each by two strokes. In 1989, Glasson tamed the famed “Blue Monster” course at the Doral Open for a four-round total of 13-under-par 275 to beat Fred Couples by a stroke.

In 1992, Glasson again hoisted the victor’s trophy in the Kemper Open at the TCP Avenel course, edging a quartet of players that included John Daly by a stroke. The 1994 season saw Glasson claim his sixth career win at the Phoenix Open.

His final PGA Tour victory came at the 1997 Las Vegas Invitational less than 18 months after reconstructive elbow surgery. A final-round 66 secured a one-stroke victory. That season he was named the PGA Tour’s Comeback Player of the Year.