On Sunday the Americans continued their Ryder Cup futility on European soil, losing 17.5 – 10.5 at Le Golf National. On paper, the score was worse than the infamous 2014 edition of the event. That event will forever be remembered for Phil absolutely destroying captain Tom Watson in the post match press conference.
This time around though, things appeared to be different after yet another loss. The press conference Sunday evening was very uneventful. Given the fact that captain Jim Furyk is friends with many of the guys on the team, and still an active player on the PGA Tour himself, nobody was going to throw him under the bus. Everything seemed to be amicable this time around.
Enter Patrick and Justine Reed.
Things started to go south for the self-appointed Captain America and his wife early Sunday morning when a twitter account bearing Justine’s name started replying to tweets from golf fans and media members questioning why Reed and Jordan Spieth weren’t paired together at all this week depsite having great success at the 2016 Ryder Cup.
After those tweets made the rounds, everything seemed to be mostly forgotten. Golf.com’s Dylan Dethier asked her about the tweets and she hit him with the “I don’t know what you are talking about”.
Justine declined to elaborate on the tweets when approached by a reporter at Le Golf National Sunday afternoon. Asked to confirm that the account is hers, she said, “I can’t really say. I don’t know.” When pressed for details, Justine declined to comment further.
You know the saying though, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Naturally, the question was posed in the press conference Sunday night. Sitting on opposite sides of the table in the press room, the question was asked about why Reed and Speith didn’t play together.
By now, you know the very vanilla answers that were given. However, go back and watch it again and you will see that both Spieth and Furyk went out of their way to make sure that Reed got shut out of the question.
Was it because of Justine’s tweets earlier in the day? Was it because what those two said was true? Maybe Reed had nothing more to say?
Nope, it was because Reed was ready to go scorched earth on both of them, just like Phil did in 2014.
So, what was Patrick Reed going to say? Well, thanks to Karen Crouse of the NY Times, we have that answer and oh boy, strap on in.
He said he had conveyed to Furyk his desire to be paired with Spieth, who is not a good friend but with whom he has a chemistry that is hard to pinpoint, much less replicate. Spieth was his first choice, Reed said. His second choice, he said, was Woods, whom he said he loved.
But Reed fully expected to be paired with Spieth, and he felt blindsided, he said, when Furyk decided to pair Spieth with Justin Thomas, who starred with Rickie Fowler in last year’s Presidents Cup.
Spieth and Thomas have known each other since childhood and are great friends, but Reed didn’t see why that should have been a factor in splitting up two winning pairings (Spieth/Reed and Thomas/Fowler). Reed described the decision-making process as “a buddy system” that ignores the input of all but a few select players.
While Phil stated in 2014 that they players had no say in anything, according to Reed, “select” players had more say than any others. He didn’t stop there though, going so far as to say that Jordan specifically said he didn’t want to play with Reed.
“The issue’s obviously with Jordan not wanting to play with me,” Reed said, adding, “I don’t have any issue with Jordan. When it comes right down to it, I don’t care if I like the person I’m paired with or if the person likes me as long as it works and it sets up the team for success. He and I know how to make each other better. We know how to get the job done.”
As for why he didn’t speak in the press conference, he all but confirmed that he was ready to go full Phil at Gleneagles.
When Reed and Spieth were asked about their split-up in the interview room, “I was looking at him like I was about to light the room up like Phil in ’14,” Reed said.