PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Patrick Reed’s troubled season and the occasional rowdiness of Players Championship fans – especially on a Friday afternoon – might be a volatile mix.
Reed said he isn’t worried.
“You’re always going to get a couple people here and there that are going to say something,” Reed said on Wednesday during a news conference at the Players Championship. “That’s normal … any sport you play.”
But if Reed can get heckled in the sedate setting of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational (one fan was removed) it certainly can happen at about 5:45 p.m. on Friday when he reaches the area around the 17th hole of the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, where fans will have been imbibing for most of the afternoon.
Reed will tee off at No. 1 at 1:29 p.m. on Friday. That means he and playing partners Patrick Cantlay and Hideki Matsuyama will catch the most crowded wave of Stadium Course for the week, based on historical attendance.
Ever since a controversy at the Hero World Challenge in Bermuda in December, in which he was handed a two-stroke penalty for moving sand in a bunker with his club (Reed said he hadn’t noticed), Reed has been subject to fan comments from Australia at the Presidents Cup to Orlando.
One fan was so belligerent that Reed’s caddie and brother-in-law Kessler Karain got into a physical altercation with him at the Presidents Cup in Australia. Karain was suspended for Sunday’s singles.
And it’s not only fans who have gotten on Reed’s case. He came under criticism by fellow player Brooks Koepka and former CBS golf analyst Peter Kostis for playing a bit loose with the rules.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said this week that he is “concerned” about the heckling directed at Reed.
“We have had a lot of great, direct conversations with Patrick … we fully understand his perspective,” Monahan said. “I think he’s pleased with the steps that we’ve taken. But any time you have an isolated incident, that disappoints us, as it would disappoint him.”
Reed said he is satisfied with the Tour’s response.
“I think the PGA Tour has done a great job on the security and the fans,” he said. “I feel like, as a whole, the fans have been pretty good.”
Reed said he has yet to bump into Koepka to discuss his comments and fell back on a familiar defense, blaming the media for the controversy surrounding him.
“Really, at the end of the day the noise goes away once y’all decide it goes away,” he said. “I feel like the players and all of us have moved on.”
Reed, who won his eighth PGA Tour title at the WGC Mexico Championship earlier this month, has had only a moderate amount of success at The Players. He’s made four of six cuts but his best finish was a tie for 22nd.
“It’s a golf course that is going to take a lot of thinking, a lot of really quality ball striking, and if you get out of position, some good short game,” he said.