Reed relishes spotlight
Pressure no match for fearless Texan
CHASKA, Minn. — The Ryder Cup can be the cruelest of sporting events. It can make a man or it can melt him.
For all its pomp and circumstance, the Ryder Cup can be transformed in an instant or over three long days from a friendly international golf match into a boiling cauldron of jingoism, wild emotion and dark self-doubt that can make you lose faith in yourself and your desire to strike a golf ball.
These are not things that concern Patrick Reed.
Patrick Reed was made for Ryder Cup play the way Speedos were made for swimming. Both are a perfect fit.
For the past two days at Hazeltine National Golf Club, the feisty American from Spring, Texas, has had a bounce in his step. He’s been pumping his fists, pumping up the crowd and pumping birdie putts into the bottom of the cup with equal dexterity and felicity. He is a young man in his element.
“Come game time, I’m a fiery guy,” Reed said. “I’m a competitive guy. So I hope to start getting these guys fired up even more. Being me, I might push them over the limit on trying to fire them up even more. That’s who I am. The more fire I can bring to the team, the more I can get them going — especially if I get out there and I start getting hot and start getting on a quick run — the better.
“Hopefully I can keep on bringing the fire and doing my job so the team can do their job. Hopefully, I get the crowd going, but I have nothing planned. It’s going to be just like how it was at Gleneagles.”
Two years ago at the Scottish golf temple, Reed was a Ryder Cup rookie but he snorted at the concept, going 3-0-1 and at one point burying a difficult putt and then turning with his finger to his lips, shooshing the partisan European crowd. It was the kind of bold statement one does not expect from a young man in his first Ryder Cup, but Reed has always taken a bold approach to golf. He is, after all, the same player who declared two years ago after winning the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral that he was a top-five player in the world. This from a 23-year-old who had never come close to winning a major championship.
Although he was ridiculed for it, Reed has never backed off the statement. And the way he has played this week and two years ago at Gleneagles, he’s made the declaration far less ludicrous than it may have seemed.
Reed is presently No. 8 in the world and yesterday played fearlessly in both sessions, burying a critical putt on 18 in the morning to spare a collapse he and partner Jordan Spieth suffered through when a four-hole lead with six to play melted down to Reed having to hole a tough putt to avoid defeat.
He not only did it, he said after making the putt, “I knew I had it. Just kind of one of those things that every time I have a pressure putt in that kind of situation, I think of all the times practicing those on the putting green. Just try to get as much positive thoughts I can possibly in my mind on putts like that, because really without having that on the line, it’s just a normal putt. They are never the easiest, so you have to figure out some way to make them easy.”
Easy? Is there anything easy at the Ryder Cup besides the opening ceremony?
For Reed it’s all easy because he plays golf like a middle linebacker. He attacks the course, the competition and the consequences. He thrives where others might retreat and he showed that yesterday afternoon.
Playing in his fourth match in two days, Reed put up four birdies and an eagle on the front nine and critical birdies on Nos. 14 and 15 — and did it while carrying Spieth, who played poorly, on the way to a 2 and 1 win that lifted his Ryder Cup record to a remarkable 5-1-2.
Thrusting his fists back and forth more often than Manny Pacquiao as his putts kept falling, Reed bellowed “Let’s GO! Come ON!” time and again to Spieth, the crowd and anyone within earshot, which in his case meant anyone from here to Toronto.
He high-fived and low-fived, lumbering in wide circles after each putt fell, his cheeks turning as red as the stripes on his Team USA golf shirt. To say he was animated was like saying David Ortiz is chatty.
“I didn’t have that planned,” Reed said of his quieting the crowd moment at Gleneagles and his general raucousness. “You know, it’s just that’s the kind of fire and competitiveness that I have in me that just kind of came out, and it just happened to get the crowd going.
“I’m not planning anything or anything like that. I mean, just when I get in these kind of situations, I’m going to do something, I’m sure. Just kind of one of those things that, you know, if you sit here and try to plan something or try to do something, now all of a sudden you’re taking away from preparing for the golf and that’s more important — going out and winning your point.
“I played kind of my normal game. The main thing is I love match play. Any time I kind of get in this kind of one-on-one kind of battle, it always seems to bring the best out in me.
“It’s just one of those formats that I absolutely love. Any time I can wear red, white and blue, it means everything. It just kind of brings out even more of a competitiveness in me and also brings out even more fire in me, which kind of just gets me going.”
With the U.S. holding a three-point lead, 9 1⁄2 6 1⁄2, going into today’s 12 head-tohead singles matches, anything can happen. But one thing is sure: Win or lose, Patrick Reed will not shrink from the moment.
He’ll be back at Hazeltine National to face the Europeans, and he’ll bring the thunder.