PATRICK REED VERSUS... THE WORLD?

By Torleif Sorenson on 2/2/15

Patrick Reed certainly is a talented golfer and has earned quite a few admirers. The Texas native has racked up four PGA Tour victories since 2013 and earned his highest ranking — 14th — in the Official World Golf Ranking. Last September, he starred for the United States with a team-best 3-0-1 record at the 2014 Ryder Cup. He is married and is now the father of an adorable daughter.

But all is seemingly not rosy in Patrick Reed Land.

The first public stumble came after he won the 2014 WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral, when he said that his win had made him one of the top-five golfers in the world. The facepalms, head-shaking, and caterwauling erupted almost from the moment Reed opened his mouth.

But now, some uglier stories are emerging. Author Shane Ryan has written a book called Slaying the Tiger: How Golf's Young Guns Took Over the Sport. It is scheduled for release on May 26, 2015 and will be published by Ballantine Books. Interestingly, Ryan would like to have kept his book "under a lid" until the book hits the stores, but he says this was not possible in this case:

When you finish a book, you have to wait months before it's published. Which is fine, unless you've done any investigative reporting, in which case you have to sit on your hands anxiously and pray that nobody re-creates your legwork and publishes the results in a more flexible medium before the book hits. In the case of my work on Patrick Reed, those prayers went unanswered, which is no surprise, given his notoriety and his success. As it happens, a big story on Reed is coming out in a major outlet soon, and since it proved impossible to publish anywhere else on such short notice, I'm showcasing it here before that story hits.

There has always been something a little off-key brewing beneath the surface of [Reed's] story—a swirl of rumors dating back to his college days, when he lasted a year at Georgia before transferring to Augusta State and winning two national championships, the second of them against the school that had kicked him out. There’s much to be said about his professional life, and that story is ongoing. This is a story about his past—the triumphs and the stumbles.

In fact, Ryan may be understating Reed's problems at the University of Georgia; Reed's biography on Wikipedia includes this disturbing sentence:

Reed started his college golf at the University of Georgia in 2008–09. After some issues that resulted in his expulsion he enrolled at Augusta State University, where he majored in business.

It now seems that Reed's M.O. is dark, indeed. Ryan has included stories of cheating, lying, and theft in his unofficial book excerpt. And these stories have not gone away since Reed arrived on the PGA Tour:

Even now, on Tour, a source told me that there's a private joke among certain players when Reed enters a locker room: "Hide your things," they tell each other. "Patrick's here."

Quite simply, Ryan has collected and passed along too many compelling stories to briefly summarize here; we suggest you read his entire blog post.

On Monday, Reed's managers at IMG released a statement reported by Golf Channel that was not a strict denial:

"The accusations that were made against me are serious and were intended to damage my reputation and character. They will not be taken lightly. My team and my representatives are looking into all aspects of this matter, and we look forward to setting the record straight.

"For now, I'm staying focused on my life in the present and being the best husband, father and golfer I can be."

Ryan's forthcoming book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. If Ryan is correct that a "major outlet" will bring out a big story about Patrick Reed, and that Ryan wanted to make sure he wasn't "beaten to the punch," it seems as though life for Patrick Reed is not nearly as rosy as he has told the world it is.

By all means, stay tuned.


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