Brash Patrick Reed doesn’t care ifyou hate him, but leave his family out of it
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it wasn’t that Patrick Reed was wearing a black hat Wednesday for the Wells Fargo Championship pro-am at Quail Hollow. As the saying goes, if the hat fits … But does the hat really fit in the case of Reed, perhaps golf ’s most complex and confounding case study in public image?
Reed, the newly minted Masters champion who seemed to draw as warm a reaction from the Augusta faithful as a cold snap killing off the azaleas might, has reached the point where he finds himself tiptoeing into the pro-ams, because he can sense trepidation coming from his amateur partners.
Reed, if you buy into the undercurrent of negativity that seems to follow his every step, is supposed to be the bad boy of the PGA Tour. If you listen to the accounts of some, you’d think he was stealing purses from old ladies in his spare time.
“Every time I’m playing in a pro-am, guys tell me, ‘We didn’t really know what to expect playing with you because of all the stuff we’ve read,’ ’’ Reed told The Post in a wide-ranging interview examining the negative perception that seems to remain attached to him like body odor. “Then they’re like, ‘Man, you’re such a nice guy. You’re always helping, you’re always interacting with all of us.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, because that’s who I am.’
“People make conclusions about somebody before they actually get to know someone. I feel like that’s what’s happened. They have the good guys on the Tour — I’m not going to name names, I’ll let you figure that one out — so they need to find the other side, they need to find the black hat, and it seems like that’s how I’m painted.
“There are the guys that wear the white hats and they’re painting the picture of someone to wear the black hat and they chose me — even though they don’t really know me.’’ Does he care? “Not really,’’ Reed said. Still, Exhibit A in the curious plight of Reed was his Masters victory. His dismissal from the Georgia golf team amid alleged cheating and stealing accusations and his estrangement from his parents and sister, who happen to live in Augusta (where Reed transferred after Georgia), became more a topic of conversation than Reed staving off great Sunday runs by Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler and a final-round pairing with four-time major winner Rory McIlroy to capture his first major championship.
Then, Reed did what Masters winners do in the wake of victory: He enjoyed some public displays of affection with the Green Jacket — and was inexplicably tweaked in social media for that. Phil Mickelson was revered for wearing the jacket at a Krispy Kreme drive-thru. Bubba Watson wearing it at a Waffle House drew similar fun reactions. Reed? How dare he parade around to so many events — a Rockets game, an Astros game, a Knicks ga me at the Garden and at a Chick-fil-A — wearing the treasured garment?
“It’s the one time you get to have and take the Green Jacket anywhere and everywhere,’’ Fowler said. “Patrick has never done anything to rub me the wrong way.’’
Fowler said he notices the negative perception attached to Reed and called it “unfortunate.’’
“Not to compare it but, hey, Donald Trump’s our President,’’ Fowler said. “He got elected. Accept it. That’s our President. Patrick Reed, whether you like him or not, he won the Masters. He went out and won it. There’s no politics involved. He played better than everyone else that week. He beat everyone.’’
McIlroy, who also was vanquished by Reed in an epic 2016 Ryder Cup singles match at Hazeltine, said, “I had a chat with my wife after the Masters’’ about the negativity associated with Reed.
“Geez, I don’t have a bad word to say about him apart from he’s beaten me twice in two of the biggest golf tournaments in the world,’’ McIlroy said with a smile. “The negative perception is all from hearsay, it’s all secondhand.”
Still, it felt as if there were those raining on Reed’s parade after his Masters victory instead of showering him with the respect he should have earned by capturing his first major championship.
“It seems like everyone’s always upset with me,’’ Reed said with a smile. “That’s a normal thing. I just kind of live in that world that everyone’s upset with me. That’s OK; I’ll just go out and try and do what I do.’’ Here’s what Reed does: En route to winning six times on the PGA Tour, highlighted by his Masters triumph, he works harder to be good than most of his peers — and that’s an assessment that comes from his peers. He, too, has become the resident bulldog on the U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams with teammates hoping to partner with him.
“Patty, he’s fiery,’’ Tiger Woods
said. “He’s very committed to being the best golfer he can possibly be and he works at it. I mean, he puts in way more time than people actually think. And the a mount of conf idence that he displays when he plays, it’s refreshing.’’
In Reed, world No. 2 Justin Thomas said he sees a player who “stays in his inner circle and does his own thing.’’
“You don’t want someone to get a bad rap when they don’t deserve it, but at the same time, Patrick’s not one to care,’’ Thomas said. But he does. Everyone does in some way. “It would be nice for people to actually get to know me, because when you do something like we did at Augusta and for people to come out and try to take away from what we did, it’s wrong,’’ Reed said.
“I can count numerous amounts of players that have issues at home,’’ he went on, referring to the scrutiny about his estrangement from his family. “I did something that I felt like was going to make my life better and it has. Everything I’ve done I felt like has been the best for myself, and I’ve grown with my new family.
“Honestly, people can write anything they want about me and I could care less, but once you start writing stuff about my family, my wife and my daughter and son or my mother-in-law, then you’re drawing a line.’’
That line has led Reed and what he calls his “team’’ — which consists of his wife, Justine; her brother, Kessler, who caddies for Reed; and Justine’s mother — to “build an empire around ourselves that no one’s going to be able to break.’’