Sports captures our imagination in so many ways. One of the aspects that feeds our passions about these games…(and they are games and really do not matter in the true big picture) is the battle of rivals. If a sport is lucky to have true rivalries then it is all the more interesting.
Would the Yankees really be the Yankees without their mortal enemy the Red Sox? Would Ali be Ali without Frazier? Would the Patriots be the Patriots with out….the Jets, the Raiders, the Giants, the Colts…any NFL team.
The good guy versus the bad guy. It’s a theme that we gravitate to in sports, in film, in literature and in life. Jack vs. Arnie, Tiger vs. Phil and lately Patrick Reed vs. everyone.
Reed has been a lightning rod well before he won The Masters last year. From his college days, to early professional golf to his claim to be a top five golfer well before his time and especially last year at the Ryder Cup when he tore into his captain and his team.
Karen Crouse of the New York Times gives us insight into Reed’s personal issues with what is normally a source of strength for most players: his parents. Reed and his parents are estranged and at times it got downright confrontational. And that has to make playing on the world stage a bit more challenging.
From Crouse’s piece, entitled “The Most Unwelcome Fan in Patrick Reed’s Gallery: His Father.”
In a sport where the ball is still and the mind is active, and where distractions from unruly fans, bad bounces or sudden gusts of wind abound, focus can be difficult to maintain. But during the first round of the 2018 Tour Championship in Atlanta, it became nearly impossible. Reed took one last look at his target and what he saw nearly made his head go haywire.
Why was his estranged father standing behind the green?
Reed’s parents live six miles from Augusta National Golf Club, in a two-story, Southern-style Colonial replete with a bedroom shrine to their first child and only son, who hasn’t stepped foot in the house since 2012. This week should be a joyous homecoming for Reed, who led Augusta State (now Augusta University) to back-to-back national championships and will preside over Tuesday’s legends-laden Champions dinner. But instead it has all the makings of a nightmare, with his acrimonious relationship with his family threatening to become as much a part of this year’s Masters narrative as his attempt to become the first golfer since Tiger Woods in 2002 to successfully defend his title.
“I wouldn’t at all be surprised if they show up,” Reed said.
Reed, 28, has steadfastly declined to speak publicly about the reasons for the family schism. In a Sports Illustrated story in 2015, Reed’s mother insinuated that the rift resulted from Reed’s marriage, at age 22, to the former Justine Karain, against the advice of his parents who worried that he was too young.
Click here for her entire piece it has some interesting behind the scenes stories of how Reed has to deal with more than the normal mook screaming “get in the hole” as he plays his round.
And that line that opens her third paragraph is an absolute classic, “In a sport where the ball is still and the mind is active…” That says it all about this game.
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