Slaying the Tiger Page 10

  Waiting for them, on the other side of the bracket, were the Georgia Bulldogs.

  —

  Gregory worried that Reed would be too amped up for his match, considering the circumstances, and he tried to emphasize that focusing on the opponent wouldn’t help. It had limited effect—Reed wanted the win worse than he ever had before, and nothing Gregory could say would calm him down.

  Reed’s teammates delivered their message of support to Harris English, and the match was on. This time, Reed fished his wish—Russell Henley beat Norlander, Hudson Swafford lost, and the teams split the other two matches, leaving Reed and English as the last men on the course. Their point would decide the national championship.

  “If you were to go back in history and ask Harris if there’s one match that he wanted to win,” Chris Haack told me later, “that was the match. Not only did it mean winning the national championship, which was ultimately what we all wanted, but just a lot of the…oh, gosh, I don’t know, the way that things always transpired with Patrick…it just wasn’t a very…”

  Here he trailed off, before concluding, “I want to take the high road here.”

  Reed held a 1-up lead early, and though English squared the match before the turn, Reed won the 10th and 13th holes to go 2-up. He held the same lead heading into the 17th, and needed only a half to win the match. Neither player hit a great drive, but when English hit his approach into the water, the match was down to its dying embers. Reed made a mess of the hole, but still left himself with two putts from six feet to win. His first crawled up to the cup, and the second was conceded.

  Just like that, Reed had finished off the greatest two-year underdog act in college golf history. Josh Gregory and Augusta State had won back-to-back national championships, and they did it in style, beating two of the sport’s biggest juggernauts.

  For Reed, it was the end of a short but brilliant college career, and the cherry on top of a 6-0 match play record at the NCAA championships. He kept his emotions in check—deep down, he knew Haack wasn’t wrong to let him go, and as badly as he wanted to win, there was a bittersweet feeling knowing his college career was over.

  To the Georgia players and coaches, though—and even to some of Reed’s teammates—the win represented the opposite of a fairy-tale ending. Reed and English had deserved different fates in their final match, they thought, and everything about it felt deeply unfair. One of O’Connor’s sources, in the ESPN story, called it “the death of karma.”

  * * *

  Q. Do you ever feel guilty, like your wife is kind of tiny and she’s carrying your big bag?

  PATRICK REED: No, not really, due to the fact the first time we ever carried it, it was 106, humid and sunny, and once the 18th was done [she] was like, ‘All right, I’m ready for some more,’ and I was almost done. I could barely move. So I don’t feel sorry for her. She should feel sorry for me.

  That same night, Reed was in a car, driving from Oklahoma City to Memphis, where he had a sponsor’s exemption at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. In the span of a day, he opted out of his senior year and turned professional. He proposed to Justine in January, and his new fiancée told him that she’d like to try caddying. Her endurance on that first blistering day in Houston—Reed loaded up the bag with extra water bottles and rain gear to make it as tough as possible—sealed the deal.

  In 2012, they decided to use sponsor exemptions on the PGA Tour where they could, and to compete in the one-day Monday tournament qualifiers, where non-exempt, non-Tour golfers can fight for a spot in the field. From April to August, their lives took on a hectic rhythm—drive to the Monday qualifier, play in the tournament if they succeeded, make the cut, finish up on Sunday, and drive like hell to the next Monday qualifier. They endured more than a few sleepless nights as they raced across America, hellbent and exhausted.

  His record on the year was remarkable—he went six-for-eight on those Mondays, twice making birdies on the 18th to qualify on the number, and got a handful of sponsor exemptions to boot. He made seven of twelve cuts on the season, and earned just over $300,000. A nice start, but as in 2011, it wasn’t nearly enough to earn his Tour card for 2013.

  Instead, he took his second crack at Q-School, and this time he qualified for the final stage—six rounds in La Quinta, California, for the last time ever. Only the top twenty-five plus ties advanced, and after the second round, when Reed shot a 75, he was below 130th place and ready to throw in the towel. He had checked out, and he knew his failure meant another year in limbo, without a PGA Tour card. The thought is enough to devastate even the toughest golfer, but when he told Justine, she refused to let him quit.

  “It’s another Monday,” she told him, and that would become a rallying cry whenever Reed needed to muster a single great round. He strung together a series of 67s and 68s, and he made the cut in 22nd place. The unbelievable comeback was complete, and he had his card. Later that month, he and Justine were married.

  —

  At the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, the next August, Reed found himself holding the first 54-hole lead of his PGA Tour career. He caught fire on Sunday, shooting a 66, but ahead of him, Jordan Spieth did one better with a 65. That left the two tied after 72 holes, and they headed to the 18th tee for a playoff.

  If Reed vs. English had been a good vs. evil story for some of the players involved, Reed vs. Spieth wasn’t far off. Where Reed, still largely unknown on the Tour, had a rough reputation, Spieth, who had just turned twenty, was a poster boy for all that golf was supposed to represent. He was clean-cut, respectful, well-spoken, and professional—a fantasy of what an athlete should be. He was already a winner, too–he’d holed out to make a playoff at the John Deere Classic, and survived five playoff holes to beat Zach Johnson and David Hearn.

  The two were like fire and water, which may be why they would go on to form such a strong team at the Ryder Cup a year later. After Spieth survived the first playoff hole with a miracle recovery, they moved on to the second playoff hole—the par-4 10th. This time, the roles were reversed—Spieth bombed a 3-wood into the fairway, and Reed went right, barely staying in bounds. It was so close to the white stakes that a volunteer signaled out-of-bounds—effectively ending the tournament—and Reed pulled his hat down low so nobody could see his face. In the midst of this low, four other volunteers ran out to the fairway and gave the safe signal—the first volunteer had made a mistake.

  Spieth put him under the gun yet again with a beautiful approach that left him twelve feet for birdie. Worse, Reed’s drive had stopped under a hanging tree branch, off the fairway and even off the rough, resting on an uphill lie in a bed of dirt next to a clump of bushes. He tried to move two TV cables away from his ball, and nearly tripped over his bag as he moved them backward.

  The situation was impossible, but Spieth’s excellent second shot left just one option—a low screamer through the trees, dead straight with a three-quarter 7-iron that he measured at 163 yards. With the ball well above his feet, Reed felt like he was playing tee-ball again, and he knew if he hit the full 8-iron he needed, the ball would fly left. Even clubbing up, the shot wasn’t exactly inviting, since a fairway bunker and plenty of rough obstructed him from getting much roll, forcing him to carry the shot all the way to the uphill green. Reed also hated straight lines—he saw curves whenever he envisioned a shot, but the trees wouldn’t allow for a draw.

  He punched the ball out with almost no follow-through, and it took off low and climbing. The improbable shot cleared the crest of the hill by a foot, and landed six feet from the pin. It was the feeling from childhood all over again—the ball coming off the clubface like a dream, barely felt, going exactly where he wanted it to go. Spieth gave him a thumbs-up from across the fairway, and later called it one of the most unbelievable shots he’d ever seen.

  Spieth was up first with his birdie attempt, and he over-read the break by a half inch at most. Reed had the easier putt, shorter and straighter and uphill, and he hunched over, struc
k the ball, and watched it break toward the left edge of the hole. When it dropped, he was a PGA Tour champion.

  * * *

  “I’m hoping one day he’ll come out and have the honesty to talk about his past. It would really be a great cleansing process for him, but I don’t know if he’ll ever do that. I wish he would, because unfortunately he’s going to always get questions about his past. Always questions about what happened at Georgia, what happened at Augusta State, what happened with his parents. I wish he would get it off his chest at some point in life, because I think it would help him become a better person.”

  —JOSH GREGORY

  It’s hard to know whether a troubled athlete ever truly changes, and the ubiquity of high-paid experts dedicated to crafting their player’s image casts a cynical light on the concept of personal growth. Which changes are sincere, goes the unanswerable question, and which are mere PR window-dressing and stagecraft, designed to lure a gullible writer?

  “He has a big heart,” said Bill Reed. “It’s hard for him to show it in certain circumstances, because he needs to be on guard. He’s so driven, and to him he thinks it’s a sign of weakness. And you have to understand, too, he’s still only twenty-four years old, and he’s been in the adult world a lot sooner than children his age should be and need to be.”

  Brian Harman put it more bluntly.

  “You have to remember that he was seventeen years old,” he said, of Reed’s freshman year at Georgia. “We all do a lot of stupid shit when we’re seventeen.”

  —

  Reed became estranged from his family after graduating from Augusta State and leaving home in 2011—an estrangement that has lasted to the present. Neither his mother or father were invited to his wedding in December 2012, and contextual clues indicate that the relationship worsened from there.

  When the Augusta Chronicle, ignorant of the longstanding rift, ran a tame video interview with Bill, Jeannette, and Patrick’s younger sister Hannah after his win at the Wyndham Championship, sources told me that the Legacy Agency, which represented Reed at the time, requested that the video be taken down. The matter died when the Chronicle refused to capitulate, but the gesture shows how strained the relationship must be.

  For their part, the Reeds didn’t want to speak on the record about the divide—“As a parent, no matter how much pain you’re going through, our philosophy on it is we’re never going to throw one of our own children under the bus,” Bill said. “No matter how much our children hurt us, I’m not going to hang them out to dry in a national setting.”—but Bill is on Twitter, with a profile picture showing father and son at a golf tournament, and a tweet from December 2012—on Patrick’s wedding day—seems to make a pointed statement about his relationship with his son: “You can love someone with all your heart but there is no promise they are going to love you back. The ladies in my life are best!”

  His mother, Jeannette, also has a social media presence, and her Twitter feed is dense with vague messages that hint at a relationship gone sour, and alternate between bitterness, sadness, and the hope of reconciliation. The latest instance came in December, when she wrote, “One would imagine the pure joy of Christmas past would touch a person’s heart in some way #miracle #hope.”

  One message in particular seems to be a reference to Justine: “There are doers, givers & takers in the world. You do & give it your all out of love & support, the takers step in & take what is not theirs.”

  Bill Reed put the subtlety aside in 2015 when he became angry that Patrick didn’t reach out on Hannah’s birthday.

  “Very sad and heartbreaking at #PatrickReed did not wish his little sister happy birthday God has a plan wish we could see it,” he wrote, and both Jeannette and Hannah responded in kind.

  In 2015, Alan Shipnuck ran a piece for Sports Illustrated alleging that Justine had gone so far as to have police officers throw Bill and Jeannette out of the tournament at the U.S. Open in Pinehurst when she spotted them watching Patrick. On December 19, 2012, Hannah Reed tweeted “It’s the devil’s birthday todaaay #hopeyouhavefun.” The devil, in this case, was Justine.

  But the full scope of family relations is too complex to be untangled from a few words on social media. For now, it’s enough to say that Patrick Reed is fighting a battle on two fronts. On the golf course, he’s winning in style, and may be the toughest young American in a generation loaded with talent. Off the course, he’s been painted into a corner by a complicated past and the questionable choices of the present.

  These were the conflicting lives he brought to Doral that Sunday, when he stood on the putting green with a three-shot lead, ignoring Tiger Woods.

  * * *

  *1 Incidentally, I found the same to be true—the angry tyrant I had watched on the course, and the rowdy troublemaker I’d imagined, were never in evidence in a one-on-one setting. I enjoyed my time in West Virginia with him and Justine more than most of my interviews with Tour players, and I thought of him as a good storyteller with more charisma than I’d expected.

  *2 To Bill and Jeannette, the drinking was a new side of Reed—he had never had much of a social life at all in high school, and though he had the odd girlfriend here and there, drinking was never part of his agenda. Their theory today is that Patrick was trying to fit in on a college campus where he felt desperately alone.

  *3 After telling me how happy he was when he realized who his opponent would be, Reed was quick to add that Uihlein was his “good friend”—a typical verbal maneuver for Reed, and one which I might even have believed if he didn’t keep using it in reference to certain golfers, such as Harris English, who I knew definitively were not his friends.

  Later in the year, when I told Henrik Stenson that Reed had included him in the “good friends” list, he laughed, and responded with his unique brand of dry Swedish humor.

  “I wouldn’t say that we go way back,” he deadpanned. “I played one practice round with him at Wells Fargo a couple years ago. And…well, it’s nice if he thinks that everyone he knows a little bit is one of his friends. That’s obviously a way to look at it. But if I’m going to express myself politically, I guess he’s an interesting character.”

  Later, when I asked why he kept to himself on the range, I got a truer version from Justine: “Really, he has few good friends out here, but he’s not worried about being the most popular guy.” I looked to Reed, who nodded. “She basically nailed it.”

  6

  DORAL, FLORIDA

  The Cadillac Championship; Tiger and the Top-Five Kid

  Q. The red shirt, I know your previous two wins you wore a red shirt. Do you always wear a red shirt in the final round?

  PATRICK REED: I do.

  Q. Why is that?

  PATRICK REED: Well, the best player ever to live when I was growing up wore black pants, a red shirt.

  —

  Doral is a charmless, monotonous lump of a city that blends in my memory with the rest of Florida, but Donald Trump’s Blue Monster course isn’t half bad. It’s a difficult track, with lots of water and a wide diversity of trees—bischofias, java plums, oaks, strangler figs with their veiny, intertwined trunks, and palms everywhere—and as you make your way down the attractive fairways, you can almost forget that you’re in the middle of a suburban hellscape.

  As it happened, Tiger had bigger problems that afternoon than his unwanted protégé—he could barely cope with himself.

  Off the first tee, Tiger yanked his drive to the right and took out an unsuspecting German tourist with a direct hit to the head. You could hear the cries ahead, and by the time I hustled up to the scene of the carnage, he was an awful bloody mess—his white shirt stained red, bloody rags littering the ground around him, and no medic in sight. He was curled up on himself, and Tiger walked over and pretended to be sympathetic as he counted the moments until he could continue his round and let actual trained professionals do their job. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, shades still on, as the man rocked back and forth in a daze.
Tiger gave him a signed glove and moved on.

  It sounds convenient to say this now, but I swear I could feel Tiger’s power ebbing with each hole. After his Sunday withdrawal a week earlier, the chinks in his armor had grown suddenly visible, widening with alarming speed until you looked at him and could see only vulnerability. He wasn’t alone. There were other signs of generational change, too—on Friday, Phil Mickelson made three straight double bogeys, and after the round, when Golf Channel’s Jason Sobel asked him when he’d last had a stretch that bad, he snapped back with, “Four hours ago.” Even Jim Furyk, the ageless wonder, had opened with 78-77-75 to fade to the bottom of the leaderboard.

  I knew I had to stay with Tiger, at least for nine holes, to watch this bizarre scene play out. It didn’t take long—on the third, his drive hooked left, back into the gallery, and hit another spectator just below his jaw. Unlike the bleeding German, this victim—maybe twenty years old, American, male—couldn’t have been more pleased at the new throbbing bump on the side of his neck. Tiger, who by now was running perilously low on gloves, signed another and gave it away. “Can I get a pic?” the kid asked, but that was more than Tiger was willing to abide. He stalked away from the gallery, his round going to shit, and promptly smashed his next shot into the water.

  It got worse from there, although he managed to spare his fans any more violence. He re-aggravated his back injury while hitting out of a bunker on six, suffered spasms throughout the rest of his round, and limped in with a 78, falling to 25th place. He left Doral that day and spent the next weeks trying to rest and get ready for the Masters. Gradually, though, the pain from the nerve impingement got worse—he experienced shooting sensations down his leg, as well as numbness in the extremities, and in the end it was difficult to even get out of bed.