Patrick Reed can smile about it now, but it seems fair to say that he did not look entirely comfortable with his lead during the final round at LIV Golf Dallas this past week.
Patrick Reed is now a winner on LIV Golf after edging a playoff at Maridoe on Sunday. It was an important statement for the 34-year-old as he potentially looks to make a late charge towards possibly earning a spot on Keegan Bradley‘s Ryder Cup team.
Reed has previously been an outstanding performer on the Ryder Cup stage. But having not played in either of the last two events, he has his work cut out if he is going to make the team at Bethpage.
He does deserve a lot of credit for battling back after throwing away a five-shot lead during the final round in Dallas. He must have wondered what exactly was happening when he found himself being overtaken.
Patrick Reed explained what shocked him before the final round of the 2018 Masters
Reed has proved previously however, that he can defend a lead on the biggest stages. Of course, he won The Masters in 2018 for what is, so far, his only major title.
He led from the second round at Augusta National, and found himself three shots clear of Rory McIlroy with 18 holes to play. The likes of Rickie Fowler and Jon Rahm were even further back.
One of the big questions asked of anyone who has a chance of winning a major with one round to go is how they will sleep. There will have been many who struggled desperately with the nerves.
And it seems that Reed expected to be one of those. However, speaking on the Life on Tour podcast in 2019, he insisted that he was so surprised by how easy he found it to switch off.
“Honestly, I was shocked, I actually slept amazing. I didn’t expect to sleep well, I expected to have a rough night, tossing and turning, mind going, but I was actually getting over a cold that week. And my Friday tee-time, I was the last group, and then I was the last group on Saturday, and I felt like I kept getting back home at around nine. It felt late, we had a nice little bite to eat and went to sleep,” he said.
“Also, woke up the next morning, and it was weird, I had this really calm feeling. I just walked out in the kitchen in sweatpants and a t-shirt on and sat down with my daughter and just watching Disney Channel with her, just hanging out and just letting the morning go and go get ready for the afternoon.
“When I arrived at the golf course, I was still just really calm. My coach just kept on looking at me every day and he goes, ‘alright, this is Groundhog Day, let’s just go out and keep grinding and keep doing what we did the past couple of days, keep doing it’. I felt great, had a great warm-up and all of a sudden I go to the putting green by number one and I’m still feeling great, no nerves yet or anything like that.
“I’m like, man, something I did not expect [this], I expect to be just running out with my head cut off feeling nervous and everything. All of a sudden, I walked through the ropes to the first tee and I stepped on the first tee and the nerves just slapped me right in the face. I was like, ‘oh my gosh’.”
How the patrons at Augusta National helped inspire Reed to his Masters victory
Reed has been such an intriguing character throughout his career. It is fair to say that he has definitely rubbed some fans up the wrong way at times. But there was a reason that he was labelled Captain America after some of his performances in the Ryder Cup.
He seems to thrive when the galleries are against him. And it turns out that the patrons at Augusta National managed to inspire him that little bit more before that final round.
While they were respectful, he admitted after his victory that it was clear who they were really supporting when his playing partner arrived at the first tee.
“Yeah. I walked up to the first tee and had a really welcoming cheer from the fans, but then when Rory walked up to the tee, you know, his cheer was a little louder,” he said.
“But that’s another thing that just kind of played into my hand. Not only did it fuel my fire a little bit, but also, it just takes the pressure off of me and adds it back to him.
“I think that’s the biggest thing is going into a Sunday, especially trying to win, for me trying to win my first; for him, trying to win the career Grand Slam, it’s who is going to handle the pressure and who is going to have more pressure on them.
“Honestly, I felt like a lot of that pressure was kind of lifted and kind of taken off of me. The fans, yes, were cheering for me, but some of them were cheering more for Rory. At the same time, you had a lot of the guys picking him to win over me, and it’s just kind of one of those things that the more kind of chatter you have in your ear and about expectations and everything, the harder it is to play golf.
“I just kind of went out there and just tried to play golf the best I could and tried to stay in the moment and not worry about everything else.”
Of course, Keegan Bradley has to take all sorts of factors into consideration before naming his team for the Ryder Cup. But Reed’s ability to step up when he is not the fan favourite is hard to ignore.
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