REED TAMES ELITE FIELD, BLUE MONSTER
Young pro’s hot run continues with Doral win
DORAL, FLA. The guy in the red shirt won the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship on Sunday at Trump National Doral.
No, it was not Tiger Woods. It was Patrick Reed who tamed the nasty, revamped Blue Monster and held off one of the best fields in golf to win by one shot over Bubba Watson and Jamie Donaldson.
And this red shirt is starting to mean something, too, as Reed won for the second time this season and for the third time dating to the Wyndham Championship in August.
Reed closed with an even-par 72 to finish at 4-under-par 284. Watson (68) and Donaldson (70) finished at 3 under, while Richard Sterne (71) and Dustin Johnson (72) finished in a tie for fourth at even-par.
Phil Mickelson (74) tied for 16th while Woods, who dealt with a bad back for the second event in a row, shot 78 to finish in a tie for 25th with Rory McIlroy.
“I have three wins on the PGA Tour,” said Reed, who won the Humana Challenge in January. “I truly believe that I am a top-five player in the world.”
Reed, 23, became the youngest winner of a WGC event — playing in his first WGC event. And Reed, who was ranked 586th in the official world golf rankings in 2012, is now No. 20. He also is third in the FedExCup standings and in a strong position to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team.
And he’ll play in his first major championship, the Masters, in five weeks.
Reed started the round with a two-stroke lead and stretched it to three with birdies on three of his first four holes. He led by three or four most of the day. He never lost the lead despite visiting bunkers on five consecutive holes, starting on the 13th, and took a two-stroke lead to the final hole, where a bogey 5 cut his winning margin in half.
“He’s playing good,” Watson said of Reed. “He’s real young but obviously is a great player. He has a lot of confidence, and that’s really what it is. It takes a lot of confidence. You see that with a lot of guys, when you have confidence, and he’s backing it up with his game. He has the same ball flight I think every time, a little draw, and putts the ball really well.”
Watson made birdies on 15 and 16 but just missed with his putt on 17. Donaldson pulled within one with a birdie on the 17th, but a bogey on the 18th, where he found a greenside bunker, did him in.
“I played really well all week,” Donaldson said. “My long game was really good from tee to green, and I played really good. I think in the end, it came down to not quite holing enough putts. But I hit a lot of good putts this week, and sometimes they just don’t go in.
“But I’m very happy with the week overall.”
But no one was happier than Reed, who basically has been happy for a long time. His wife, Justine, who was on the bag when he won the Wyndham Championship, is pregnant with the couple’s first child, a girl.
Reed said he’s a down-to-earth guy, a fierce competitor and a man who just likes to work hard.
“I have a lot of confidence in my game. It’s one of those things that you build by how hard you work,” Reed said. “And I feel like I’m one of the hardest workers out here, and it definitely shows.”