MELBOURNE, Australia – When Patrick Reed arrived at the first tee at Royal Melbourne, the partisan crowd pelted him with catcalls that referenced his recent rules infraction for improving his lie in a waste bunker at the Hero World Challenge.
“Are you really going to make your caddie carry 14 clubs and a shovel?” one shouted.
That one even made Reed crack a smile.
Standing near the first tee as an observer on Day One was American Matt Kuchar, who said he expected the jeers to fire up Reed.
“I think he really enjoys that,” Kuchar said. “I saw that as being a thing where, man, this is going to get Patrick in the state he wants to be in; he needs to be in; plays better in that state. When I heard it, I thought, ‘Can’t wait to see how he does. This is his element.’ ”
But Reed didn’t shush the crowd as he had done at the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. Nor did it lead to inspired play. He and partner Webb Simpson never led in their Four-ball match and lost 1 up to Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama and C.T. Pan of Chinese Taipei. It was Reed’s first loss in four Presidents Cup Four-ball matches.
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Reed received a chorus of boos when his name was announced, the only player to receive such a welcome. Two days after a fan dubbed him “The Excavator,” Reed stepped to the first tee and belted his tee shot down the right side and watched in disgust as it rolled into a bunker. The crowd erupted in cheers.
“I’ll have the shovel, thanks,” one fan said.
From the you can’t make this up department: Reed hit into bunkers on the first three holes. There were catcalls of “get in the bunker” and “stay out of the bunker.” Seemingly every hole, a spectator or two made some crack but it was rarely over the top.
When Reed drove into the hay right of the seventh fairway, a spectator declared it a bad lie and joked, “Go ahead and fix it. Take a foot wedge.”
Reed was heckled with “Mr. Sandman,” and there were a few cries of “cheat,” most vocally from a boozy group of fans holding Heinekens in a chalet bordering the 10th hole.
“It’s exactly what I expected,” Reed later said.
“Undeserved,” Simpson said. “Undeserved.”
But overall, the fan reaction was subdued and while it likely will continue throughout the event, it didn’t seem to impact Reed negatively. If anything, it failed to provide Reed with the boost that Kuchar expected.
The Internationals came out punching, as Matsuyama and Pan combined to birdie Nos. 2-5 and take an early 2-up lead. Reed drove the sixth green, but it was Simpson who canned the birdie putt to win the hole. That was the only hole they won on the first nine. They fell 2-down when the American team both drove into trouble on No. 9 and made bogey to lose the hole.
“That hole alone, you know, is the difference of being all-square than down,” Reed said. “You know, in a format like this, you just can’t make bogeys and unfortunately neither of us was able to convert.”
Reed didn’t go down without a fight. He cut the deficit in half at No. 12 by knocking a short iron from 134 yards to inside 4 feet. At 16, with Captain Tiger Woods looking on, Reed holed an 11-foot birdie putt to tie the match and yelled, “Come on!”
That was the closest we came to seeing the fist pumps and hijinks that earned Reed the nickname “Captain America” other than a supporter at the first tee dressed in a Captain America onesie.
But one hole later, Matsuyama buried a 27-foot birdie putt to regain the lead and that proved to be the difference.
“How good was that putt?” Pan said later.
Reed had one last chance to make birdie and salvage half a point but his putt didn’t even scare the hole.
“We brought it back,” Simpson said. “But we just didn’t get it done.”
