Slaying the Tiger Page 9

  Success followed success, and during a chance visit to Athens, Georgia, on the way home from a summer tournament, the Georgia coaches used the opportunity to show him the school facilities and make their pitch. Reed fell in love. A few weeks later, he reversed his commitment to Texas, ignored LSU completely, and pledged his college years to Georgia.

  Again, Reed’s parents faced a conundrum—would they make him honor his commitment to impart a lesson about keeping promises, or would they allow him to pursue the college life he wanted? In the end, they let Patrick determine his own path. John Fields was more than a little upset in Austin, but there was nothing he could do.

  Reed won the Louisiana state championship as a junior, and since he already had enough credits to play Division 1 golf, Chris Haack encouraged him to come to school a year early. The class above Reed was full of unknown quantities, and Haack thought he might need Patrick sooner than expected.

  As it turned out, those unknown quantities were Russell Henley, Harris English, and Hudson Swafford, all of whom panned out in a big way. It was too late for Reed to reverse course, though, and when he finally came to Georgia, he found himself as a cog in a stacked roster that included the three super sophomores and senior star Brian Harman.

  Haack had a rule that any player who made the semifinals of the U.S. amateur in the summer wouldn’t have to qualify for the first college tournament in the fall. When Reed advanced to the final weekend, losing to Danny Lee in the semis, he was exempt for the start of his college career. This, along with his penchant for boasting, isolated the seventeen-year-old Reed when he arrived on campus. The fact that he knocked out a veteran whenever he qualified for a tournament didn’t help—Reed wasn’t the kind of kid who was equipped to handle the delicate situation with the requisite tact. If anything, it was reminiscent of another Georgia player who ran afoul of his teammates and coach in a year with an unusual amount of talent. Like Bubba Watson, Reed quickly drifted outside the Bulldogs’ tight inner circle.

  When he explained to me what went wrong in his freshman season, Reed chalked it up to being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people in such a small area, leading him to seek out a more comfortable environment.

  The full story, however, shines a light on a golfer who veered completely out of control in his one year at Georgia. If arrogance were the only issue, he might have merely remained an irksome presence. It wasn’t, he didn’t, and the situation grew much worse.

  Long after I spoke with Reed in West Virginia, I contacted multiple sources close to the Georgia program. What they told me was startling: Reed’s teammates that season didn’t just hate him—they actually suspected him of cheating during a qualifying event.

  When I presented these accusations in an article before this book was published, Reed appeared on the Golf Channel and stated that he had never been suspended for cheating (which, for the record, I never wrote). He claimed he had a sworn statement from Chris Haack affirming his position. Two days later, the journalist Stephanie Wei reported that the sworn statement from Haack was quite short, and simply said that while Patrick Reed was at UGA, Haack “was not aware of any allegations of cheating” against Reed, and that such allegations “played no role” in Reed’s dismissal from the UGA golf team. However, in Wei’s report, Haack confirmed that he had heard of these allegations after Reed left Georgia. “It seems as though Reed’s lawyers are attempting to play a game of semantics,” Wei wrote, “and hoping that the public will misconstrue Haack learning later as Haack never learning at all—which is not the case.”

  It also turned out that the arrest for intoxication—when Reed was found drunk at two-thirty a.m. on campus—was only the first of two alcohol violations. The second came during the week of a Georgia football game. That day, Reed and a friend had loaded up on alcohol before leaving for the game.*2 Later that night, near Atlanta, he was arrested again on a second alcohol charge.

  This time, the Reeds hired a lawyer, and were able to keep word from reaching the team after a judge threw out the case. By February, though, Chris Haack found out, and he scheduled a meeting with Patrick. According to the sources, Reed came in for the meeting with his mother Jeannette. When Haack brought up the second arrest, Jeannette reacted with surprise:

  “We thought no one knew,” she said.

  At that point, sources say, Haack realized there had been a cover-up, and he couldn’t trust anything that came from Reed or anybody else in the family. Haack’s discovery that Reed had kept his second alcohol violation a secret was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Haack began the process of severing ties between Reed and the golf team. Reed kept his access to all facilities for the rest of the academic year, along with academic tutoring, but in terms of Georgia golf, the relationship was over. It was understood that Reed would transfer for his sophomore season.

  —

  The choice came down to Florida, Wake Forest, and Augusta State, and considering that his parents now lived in Augusta, he didn’t brood over the decision for long. Head coach Josh Gregory sold him on the idea that he’d already tried the big schools, and it was time to see how he’d function in a smaller environment. Reed could see the wisdom in that, so he chose to spend the next two years at Augusta State, living at home the second year.

  Gregory’s program was an interesting anomaly in the sport—golf was the school’s only Division 1 program, and the college itself had none of the allure of the surrounding SEC and ACC universities. Augusta State lacked their huge student populations, top-level football programs, and sprawling campuses. When Reed was in high school, Gregory didn’t even bother recruiting him; as he told me, “Augusta State doesn’t get the Patrick Reeds of the world.”

  Recruiting against schools like Georgia and Georgia Tech was a pipe dream—no student would visit both places and come away with an urgent desire to make Augusta his college home. Instead, Gregory would look for mid-level talents in the southeast that had some of the competitive drive he coveted—guys he could mold into great players. He also recruited internationally, where the reputation of his competitors didn’t carry quite as much weight. And, when fate dealt him a lucky hand, he’d take the odd castoff; the stud like Reed who, for whatever reason, couldn’t cut it at his original school.

  Gregory had been a lifelong underdog himself, a college golfer under Hank Haney at SMU who never won a tournament, and he knew almost from the minute he turned pro that he lacked the mental game to succeed. When he looked around at his friends who were thriving at the highest levels, he saw players who believed they were twice as good as they actually were. Gregory was the opposite—he never thought he was half as good as he really was—and the sport made him miserable. But the analytical brain that spoiled his playing career made him an ideal coach. He knew exactly what to look for, and he became an expert not only at finding diamonds in the rough, but training them to take down the high-profile stars who had overshadowed them their entire lives.

  Even for Gregory, Reed represented a new challenge entirely. He understood that he needed a player of Reed’s caliber to put a very good Augusta State team over the top, and he also knew that Reed wasn’t squeaky-clean. But he had no idea how bad things would get, and how fast. Once again, Reed made a terrible first impression, angering his teammates and making life difficult for his coach. He talked too much about himself, refused to listen to advice, and came off as someone with deep insecurities who was trying to project an infallible image.

  When I asked Gregory what form Reed’s behavior took, he described a player who was so intent on proving that he was the best golfer—motivated by an intense fear of failure—that he couldn’t turn it off and have normal social interactions with his teammates. Even though adults liked him, he had a one-track mind around people his own age, and his relationships with golfers became antagonistic and tense. He would openly tell his teammates that he was better than they were, that he was going to beat them, and so forth. They didn’t enjoy having him around, and Reed could sense their d
islike. It hurt him, and it exacerbated his need to prove his value on the golf course—to identify completely with the idea of Patrick Reed the golfer. The self-defeating cycle perpetuated itself, driving an enormous wedge between Reed and the rest of the team.

  On one memorable night—one of the few times he hung out with his teammates in a social setting—sources say he became so belligerent toward one of his teammates that the situation grew violent. He also got suspended at the start of the season for reasons that long remained shrouded in mystery, kept secret by golf’s omertà.

  The news did reach the Georgia golf community, and the cause of the suspension—confirmed by multiple sources—didn’t surprise those who knew him back in Athens: accusations by teammates that he had shaved strokes in two qualifying events.

  Reed has denied these allegations, and in his Golf Channel appearance he referenced a second sworn statement his lawyers had obtained from Josh Gregory to back him up. The statement that Gregory provided to Reed’s lawyers stated that Reed’s suspension stemmed from a “scoring error” and asserted that Gregory had “no evidence that [Reed] ever cheated.” The statement from Gregory also mentioned that the relationship between Reed and his teammates was “very strained at this time.”

  After Reed’s Golf Channel denial, Stephanie Wei and Steve Eubanks contacted former teammates of Reed’s, and they elaborated on the events leading to Reed’s suspension from the Augusta team. According to them, Reed turned in incorrect scores in two straight qualifying rounds, which Reed’s teammates took as a clear sign of cheating. Reed’s teammates confronted him in a team meeting, where he became aggressive and denied shaving strokes on purpose. Gregory sat the team down down a second time without Reed present, and they voted unanimously to kick Reed off the team. According to Wei, Gregory initially assented, but later changed his mind and reduced the penalty to a two-match suspension. The players briefly considered sitting out as a protest, but finally accepted Gregory’s decision.

  The suspension cost him the first two tournaments of the season, and Gregory told him that unless he grew up, and grew up quickly, he’d never make it either in college or on the PGA Tour. Gregory also placed a phone call to Haack, angry at just how difficult his player had proven to be, and Reed’s teammates held several meetings that year deciding what to do about the black sheep. In addition, a source close to the scene told me that Reed would have tense phone conversations with his father after events he didn’t win, and that these often became accusatory and angry, devolving into intense shouting matches before Reed hung up. The exact nature of the relationship wasn’t well known, but the sense among the team was that Bill was unreasonably tough on his son.

  There were never any official findings at either school regarding these claims. Nonetheless, allegations of cheating dogged Reed during his early career at both schools. It’s tempting now to paint a story of redemption—a path upward from the darkest hours. But with Reed, there was never a seismic personality shift in college. In 2011, he stopped hanging out with his teammates off the golf course completely. He was slightly more cordial with his teammates, but when I asked multiple sources whether this meant they actually liked him, the response was unanimous: hell no.

  In fact, something odd began to take shape with those Augusta State teams. Where most coaches preach team chemistry, what developed between Reed and his teammates was the opposite. They so despised each other that the environment became abnormally competitive—particularly between Reed and Henrik Norlander, two alpha dogs who wanted to beat each other so badly that they played with a desperate intensity even in practice rounds. It’s not the textbook way to build a team, much less one that any coach would recommend, but for Augusta State, it created a hard edge among the players that served them well in NCAA match play. The idea of being intimidated by some unknown opponent was laughable—they had to deal with Patrick Reed every day.

  Everyone I spoke with agreed on one thing—if it wasn’t for Josh Gregory’s guidance and belief in Reed, he would have gone off the rails and been out of NCAA golf within a matter of months. The fact that he showed any improvement, or at least kept himself out of trouble, was due entirely to the standard Gregory set, and the artful way he dealt with a player who didn’t respond well to authority.

  Still, his teammates’ attitude never changed. Before the last round of his college career, in the national championship against Harris English, a group of Reed’s Augusta State teammates approached English—one of the most well-liked, easygoing players in the sport—with an emphatic message: They wanted to win a national title, but they hoped English would whip Patrick Reed.

  —

  The trouble was, nobody whipped Patrick Reed, especially in match play. In a one-on-one situation, he could escape his head completely and focus on beating a single opponent. During his sophomore season, after riding out the suspension, Reed proved that he was a valuable addition to the team, quickly forming a strong 1-2 attack with Norlander.

  In June, at the NCAA Championships at the Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tennessee, the Jaguars shot well enough to secure the sixth position after the three stroke-play rounds ended. A year earlier, the championship format had changed; it used to be a stroke-play event from start to finish, but now the top eight teams after the medal rounds would face off in a match play bracket. That meant Augusta State, the 6-seed, would face Georgia Tech, the 3-seed, with five players from each team squaring off in a best-of-five contest.

  Reed drew Chesson Hadley that day, the Yellow Jacket who would go on to become PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2014. Neither player ever established more than a one-hole lead, but coming down the 18th hole, Reed, who had proven his match play chops at the U.S. amateur the summer before he came to Georgia, was 1-up. They needed his win, as Tech led 2-1 in matches completed. Hadley’s approach was mediocre, landing more than thirty feet from the pin, and Reed, sensing blood, put his twelve feet away. Barring a miracle, a two-putt would win. Incredibly, though, Hadley holed his long birdie attempt. The pressure was squarely on Reed, and he responded, sinking his own birdie and letting out a primal shout when it fell.

  Henrik Norlander won the deciding match on the 18th hole, and Augusta State pulled off the upset to advance to the semifinals. There, they handled the Florida State Seminoles, with Reed winning again, and it was on to the championship, where they’d face their stiffest challenge yet in top-ranked Oklahoma State. The Cowboys featured future pros like Morgan Hoffmann, Kevin Tway, and Peter Uihlein—son of Wally Uihlein, CEO of the Acushnet Company and the man who runs Footjoy and Titleist, which makes him one of the most powerful people in golf.

  Uihlein is as close as anyone comes to golf royalty, and Reed, with his combative nature and the giant chip on his shoulder, seemed to take a special pleasure in playing against him. They drew each other that day, and after Uihlein took the first hole, Reed won the next three. That led to the seventh hole, where Uihlein conceded a short par putt to Reed, and Reed refused to return the favor when Uihlein’s birdie attempt rolled up next to the hole. Uihlein, annoyed, missed the near-gimme. The annoyance turned to rage as he swatted the ball into a water hazard, and Reed, now 4-up, knew he’d won the mental game. He coasted from there, and the match ended 4&2 in Reed’s favor. Henrik Norlander and Mitch Krywulycz came through in their matches, and Augusta State’s motley crew of underdogs had its first national title.

  Afterward, Reed approached Gregory with tears in his eyes and thanked him for sticking by his side. He knew how close he’d been to losing his second team in two years, and how it would have poisoned him for every other college program. He had nearly sabotaged himself out of both a national title and the stable foundation he desperately needed before launching his professional career. Only Gregory’s forbearance had saved him.

  —

  The 2011 national championship was held in Karsten Creek, Oklahoma State’s home course. When the hosts won their quarterfinal match and Augusta State—now the 7-seed—topped Georgia Tech for the sec
ond straight year, a revenge narrative took shape. The bitter Oklahoma State players had made comments the year before to the effect that the best team had lost, and they were eager for another crack at the upstarts who had left a sour taste in their mouths.

  Thousands of Oklahoma State fans lined the course for the semifinal. Josh Gregory compared the atmosphere to a Ryder Cup—the fans erupted when one of their players hit an approach to thirty feet, yet stayed completely silent if an Augusta State player stuck one inside five feet. Gregory walked with Henrik Norlander during his match against Kevin Tway, and they were on their way to the 13th tee when he decided to stir the pot.

  “Tough crowd out here today,” he said loudly, giving Norlander a fist bump.

  “Shut up, asshole,” came the response from a voice in the crowd.

  Gregory loved it, and the atmosphere was right up Reed’s alley as well. He was set to go last in the running order, and he knew the match could come down to him, which was just fine—he wanted the pressure on his shoulders. When the draw came out, and he saw that he’d be facing Peter Uihlein for the second straight year, he thought, “Even better.”*3

  Uihlein was now the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, and had played in the Masters in April—a rare honor for a college student—but the accolades only seemed to stoke the flames of Reed’s competitive fire. Uihlein, from the start, never had a chance.

  Reed birdied six of the first eleven holes, and as he walked up the 10th, Uihlein looked at him with something like disbelief.

  “Every time I play you, it’s like I run into a buzz saw,” he said. “You just cut me down.”

  Reed won the match by the gaudy score of 8&7—he had faced the top amateur in the world, and the player The Wall Street Journal had called “the next great champion” just two months earlier, and humiliated him on his home course.

  Norlander won again, and in a dramatic final match that went extra holes, the team had to rely on their fifth golfer, Carter Newman. “He was probably the most nervous guy out of all of us,” Reed told me, adding that when he realized their hopes depended on Newman, his first thought was “Oh, no.” But Newman salvaged a victory, and sent Augusta State to the championship round for the second straight year.