Patrick Reed has not got many ultras, but if he did, they would probably be singing an old Millwall chant: “No one likes us, no one LIKES US, no one likes us, we don’t care.” (Other unpopular football clubs are available).
In spite of that, one would expect his opening round at the Open to be a bunfight for viewing room. My yellow armband guaranteed that I could crouch in front of the huddled masses, who had come from Arbroath to Andover to see the world’s best take on the links.
The Open is still the purest form of golf, in most people’s eyes, played on seaside courses that bear the closest resemblance to those that players have taken on for centuries.
But the wolf is very much at the door, with former banker and now CEO of the R&A Martin Slumbers taking off the chain and undoing the latch on the eve of the tournament, welcoming Saudi Arabian sportswashing to the Open Championship with open arms.
In Reed, he has a more-than-willing go-between, it seems. His golf bag is emblazoned with the name of new employers LIV Golf and the cursive ‘A’ logo, plastered all over his shirt, hat and jumper, stands for the Four Aces, the club he plays for in the LIV team format – which counts Pat Perez as one of the “aces” and, ironically in his case, has “obsessed with better” as a motto. They did at least win the team title in London last month but Reed remains a walking billboard for one of LIV’s many half-hearted gimmicks. Even his water bottle is Four Aces.
Reed’s golf is still pretty good. He probably would have broken 70 had his tee-shot at 17, the new devilish par 3, not found the front bunker and/or his putt from 15 feet to save par not lipped out.
“The game feels good. The number is just not producing. That easily should have been a 4-, 5-, 6-under par round and I shoot 1-under par,” Reed said.
“I just need the putter to wake up and get a little hot. A lot of burned edges and missed putts.”
In total, he found four bunkers (world No 1 Scottie Scheffler said “it’s pretty much a stroke penalty, the way the bunkers are shaped”), the longest putt he holed was 11 feet, and he was level par on the par 5s – and yet he came home one under and far from out of contention. You cannot win the Open on the Thursday but you sure can lose it.
And despite all of that, as well as the fact he is a Masters champion, has six other major top-10s and is a three-time Ryder Cup star (including going unbeaten at Hazeltine in 2016), Reed barely caused a blip on the radar here.
Arguably, the most excited any gallery got was at the ninth green, where the grandstand is close enough to a sizeable bar to be rowdy even when he passed through before 10am. It was there he found another bunker, and skulled his chip out into the flagstick. They probably get bonus points for that at LIV. Here it nearly rolled back into the sand.
It is vaguely fitting that the persistently unpopular Reed spent much of the day in bunkers, where he was given a penalty for improving his lie back in 2019 and has been haunted by the label “cheat” ever since.
Add to that an arrest for underage drinking and possessing a fake ID that led to him getting kicked off his college golf team at the University of Georgia and the fact he has repeatedly tried to sue pundit Brandel Chamblee and the Golf Channel for nearly a billion dollars – while trousering the extortionate sums players are able to command just for turning up to LIV Golf, and it is hard to see how anyone liked him to begin with, if they ever did.
Plenty would argue the dishonesty label is worse than the avaricious one, but he appears to have doubled down on both.
He did not win many more friends at Hoylake. The walking gallery, a group that usually gets bigger as the day goes on and the weather warms up, was rarely more than a few dozen and behind him Thomas Pieters was hitting up as early as the fourth hole, and were lucky not to be given a warning after nearly losing an entire hole on the group in front. Reed, Connor Syme and Jose Luis Ballester Barrio perhaps benefitted from overall slow play on a day when five-hour rounds were par.
Reed’s caddie Kessler Karain, who happens to be married to his boss’s sister, does not help matters. He insists on reading putts with his belly on the green. “Just use Aimpoint, mate,” muttered one fan, referring to the more scientific system deployed by most pro golfers.
His playing partner seemed to get on with Reed, chatting with him about the American’s week in London with his family and a visit to Wimbledon. It was almost like a Tuesday medal between two new members who had been thrown together in the scramble.
That is perhaps the tragedy of LIV, and presents one of the many questions of the coming merger. Reed will, if he does not win the Open, struggle to qualify for the Ryder Cup, one of the few tournaments where he is still a relevant entity. There is no relevance to the LIV events themselves and the players are slowly drifting into irrelevance too. A win at Hoylake can change all that of course, but the great new world will have to work to make these players relevant again.
