USA TODAY International Edition
Rules flap follows Reed Down Under
MELBOURNE, Australia – We have a villain.
The woeful saga that has been the Presidents Cup might get a much needed boost in the edge department this week as lightning rod Patrick Reed will have his rules violation in the Hero World Challenge and subsequent response to the situation follow him around Royal Melbourne Golf Club.
Opposing players on the underdog Internationals team have publicly called on the home crowd to unload on Reed, with one player using the word “cheating” after Reed was caught on camera unlawfully improving his lie in a waste bunker during the Hero with not one but two practice swings.
“It goes from wanting to beat those guys to it now turning personal, so it’s going to be a fun week,” Reed said Tuesday after a practice round.
If there’s one player who’ll enthusiastically accept the role of villain, it’s Reed, the raging bull involved in his fair
share of nasty back- and- forth banter with galleries, has been the subject of blowback in media circles, and a punching bag on social media.
For example, his putter headcover features a caricature of Reed and his famous “shush” move where he holds one finger to his lips, as he did when he shushed the vocal crowds in the 2014 Ryder Cup in Scotland.
Then there was his first shot Tuesday. As he stood over his ball on the first tee, the silence was broken.
“Next on the first tee, the Excavator,” one spectator bellowed.
Reed laughed and said, “That all you got?”
After Reed hit a piercing 3- iron stinger into the fairway, he walked over to the fan and said, “That good? That OK?”
All of this potential bad will started during the third round of the Hero. On the 11th hole, Reed was in a waste area, his ball in a depression in the sand.
With two practice swings, Reed improved his lie by flattening small mounds of sand behind the ball. Though a player is allowed to ground his club in the sand, the moving of sand from behind the ball violated Rule 8.1a ( 4), which states that a player is not allowed to “remove or press down on sand or loose soil” in order to improve the conditions affecting the stroke.
After the round, Reed pleaded his case to an official and the public, saying a different camera angle would have shown his actions occurred well behind the ball and should result in no infraction. He also said he didn’t intentionally scrape the sand, but intent isn’t considered in this situation.
Reed was assessed a two- stroke penalty. He finished third the next day, two strokes behind winner Henrik Stenson.
Social media, including from his peers, was not kind. One of the most scathing critiques came from the Internationals’ Cameron Smith.
“If you make a mistake once, maybe you can understand, but to give like a bit of a bulls-- t response like the camera angle, I mean, that’s pretty up there,” Smith said at the Australian Open tournament last weekend. “I know Pat pretty good and he’s always been nice to me, so I don’t want to say anything bad about him. But for anyone that is cheating the rules, I’m not up for that. I hope the crowd absolutely gives it to not only him but everyone ( on the U. S. team).”
Reed took umbrage to the word cheating. “It’s not the right word to use,” Reed said. “At the end of the day, if you do something unintentionally that breaks the rules, it’s not considered cheating and at the end of the day that’s what it is. If you’re intentionally trying to do something, that would be considered cheating, but I wasn’t intentionally trying to improve a lie or anything like that, because if it was, it would have been a really good lie and I would have hit it really close.
“All the guys on my team know it wasn’t intentional and yeah, it was a breach of rules, therefore, it’s a twostroke penalty, and you accept the two shots and move on the next day and try to win the golf tournament.”
U. S. playing captain Tiger Woods spoke briefly to Reed after the incident and stressed it was time to move on.
“I’m sure somebody’s going to say something out there,” Woods said. “But I think that in general, all the times I have been to Australia and have played here, the fans have been fantastic. They are the most knowledgeable, the most excitable fans. They love their sport. They are going to come out and it’s going to be bipartisan, as it should be. They are going to root for the Internationals more so than they are us. There’s nothing wrong with that.
“I think Pat will be fine. ... He’s handled a tough upbringing well, and I just think that he’s one of our best team players and is one of the reasons why all of the guys wanted him on the team.”
Internationals captain Ernie Els understands why some of his players came out and spoke against Reed and urged the fans to chime in. But as Woods said, it’s time to move on.
“These guys are competitors,” Els said. “Obviously they didn’t like what they saw, and they came out and obviously you guys asked them questions about it and they were pretty new questions, and like Tiger, we’re moving on; we’ve got a Cup to play for. It’s got nothing to do with us.”
If there is, Reed will be ready for it: “When you’re on the road, I just think you have more to prove, because if you’re not playing that great, the fans are giving it to you, you just have your teammates and yourself out there to pick you up, so it just kind of shows you how strong you really can be.”