Reed’s actions create doubt
Patrick Reed is a winner. Bold, fearless and oh so talented.
But in picking up another championship trophy last weekend, running away from the field at the Farmers Insurance Open, Reed again marked himself as the winningest loser in golf.
Already on the cheater’s scale because of an incident in 2019 when he blatantly brushed sand away in a Bahamas bunker and claimed he didn’t, Reed added to the label last weekend.
It is so unfortunate. Reed hit an approach shot that bounced to a stop in the rough, left of the 10th green at Torrey Pines.
The ball landed so gingerly that it might not have been embedded in a field of cotton candy or a wet pigsty.
Reed asked a volunteer if the ball bounced and was told it had not, so he didn’t have that information to work with, but he is the only person who got a close look at his lie.
Clearly, he hoped it was embedded.
Then he treated it as a foregone conclusion. Plus, he played around with the rough for a bit. There is no good explanation for that.
Reed chose the least likely result, which coincidentally afforded him the best possible solution: a free drop to a better lie.
For you non-golfers, the word lie here refers to how the ball sits and what surrounds it that could affect the next shot.
We’re not talking about the opposite of truth, though Reed brought said question into play with his actions.
When rules official Brad Fabel arrived, Reed basically asked him, “Do you see what I saw earlier before I changed everything that would have allowed you to actually see what I
saw? But tell me you agree with what I say I saw.”
“I would not put myself in and create a situation like that,” second-place finisher Xander Schauffele told reporters at the tournament. “If my ball’s embedded, I usually will wait and call someone and kind of wait until everyone’s on the same page, wait to look at video. So I try to avoid situations like that just for that reason.”
Self-policing in golf is crucial to the integrity of the sport.
Right now, Reed, a San Antonio native who lives in The Woodlands, is Houston’s star golfer, “holding it down for H-Town,” as J.J. Watt tweeted when Reed won the Masters in 2018.
There is legal cheating and gamesmanship in sports. Such maneuvers can even be admired.
Offensive linemen and defensive backs who slyly grab a jersey to gain an edge on a pass rusher or fleet-footed wide receiver earn approving head nods.
James Harden has perfected the second-best hook in basketball history. While the sky hook made Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the most prolific scorer in NBA history, the Harden hook catches a defender slipping with an up-and-under that leads to free throws.
Pure genius. Stealing signs in baseball has long been an art. It didn’t become a serious issue until the Astros used video to gain an advantage in the age of outrage.
But the gentleman’s which isn’t played by nearly as many gentlemen as those who play the game like to brag about, doesn’t operate that way.
That Reid would be so “careless” with a four-shot lead on Saturday speaks to his apparent drive to do whatever it takes to win. He was running away with the tournament yet chose to help his chances with a questionable decision.
He unnecessarily opened a door to a controgame, versy.
Golfers hesitate to say he cheated, but … well, there often is a but when it comes to Reed.
“Do I think he cheated? No, I don’t think he cheated,” former PGA Tour player Hal Sutton said in a video posted on Twitter. “But he marked that ball, there was nobody standing around, he picked that ball up, and he put it in the palm of his hand.
“Twenty-something years (on tour), two things: I never marked (an embedded) ball and never told everybody it was embedded. I called everybody over and said, ‘Hey, I think I’ve got an embedded ball here.’ Then I marked it.”
There is no good explanation for why Reed chose to go away from that by asking for a rules official after he had taken action, other than he didn’t want anyone to see what he saw.
Reed is a winner who makes one wonder about the saying that winners never cheat.
He is such a good player, we shouldn’t even have to consider it.