Below par reception for Reed had to be explained
Journalists were not digging up ‘dirt’ on Masters winner, they were just doing their job, writes James Corrigan
There is a market for such stories. Shooting the messengers will not make any difference
So, when is it OK to bring up a new golf champion’s private life? The day itself? The day after? The day after the day after? Or never?
Perhaps you favour the last of those options and believe all that matters is what goes on between the ropes. Perhaps you dismiss the notion that the sport itself promotes its participants as personalities and, on Sunday night, you simply turned off when the last putt dropped and did not bother to watch Patrick Reed don the Green Jacket before thanking his family.
Perhaps you found no significance in seasoned observers at the course recounting they had never before heard such a muted response for a Masters winner and shrugged your shoulders at the revelations he left University of Georgia under a cloud and made many local enemies.
And perhaps you did not think it remotely interesting that on that very afternoon in that very city, just three miles away, a mother and father hosted a Masters party in the family home to cheer on their son who has refused to talk to them for six years.
Indeed, you might even have felt so strongly about those wretched journalists who dared unveil all of this that you took to social media. A number of those working within the professional game did and here are just three examples.
Eddie Pepperell, the European Tour winner, despaired at journalists reporting “on a man’s quite personal past, moments after his greatest victory”. “Leave the personal s--- for another day at least,” Pepperell tweeted.
Ted Scott, Bubba Watson’s caddie, saw individual gain below the headlines. “Some media can only promote themselves by stepping on others,” Scott said.
Ewen Murray, lead commentator for Sky Sports, on arrival home in Britain felt let down by the Tuesday newspapers.
“Disappointed to read reports of Patrick Reed’s past and not of his superb performance over four days,” Murray wrote.
Scott’s comments were the most contentious and seemed neatly to encapsulate an opinion in the locker room that the “dirt” was being used to raise journalists’ profiles.
As the first to publish an article on the Reed family dynamics, Alan Shipnuck, the golf.com writer, felt obliged to justify his actions in a lengthy blog. In truth, he could have summed it up in five words: “I was doing my job.”
Just as Shipnuck’s editors were doing their job to post his work that night. This was not “Reed’s past”, this was his present; celebrating on a green a short drive away from the estranged family home. The descriptions of his parents Bill and Jeannette hugging with Reed’s sister were immediate images which were given added resonance by the timing of their release. However, the main cause for complaint seemed to be that in the rush to release skeletons, Reed was not given due praise. Except every serious outlet ran lengthy articles on the 27-year-old’s competitive skill and spirit in fending off Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth.
Granted, in UK newspapers on Tuesday morning the spotlight shone on the Reed family fallout but that had everything to do with the time difference and convention and nothing to do with the desire to be salacious.
These are called “follow-ups” and, 48 hours on, almost always concentrate on the character behind the first-time champion. Website figures confirm there is a market for such backgrounders, whether positive or negative.
So, Reed’s story is perceived to be the latter. That is life for you and, nowadays, rightly or wrongly, that is sport. Shooting the messengers will not make any difference whatsoever.