This week’s Hero World Challenge marks the first time much of the American media has been able to talk to Patrick Reed since his controversial post-Ryder Cup comments in which he spoke out against Jim Furyk’s decision to split up the previously-successful Reed-Jordan Spieth pairing.
However, if anyone expected Reed to back off his original stance, Reed had other ideas.
Speaking to The New York Post‘s Mark Cannizzaro on Wednesday in the Bahamas, Reed doubled down on his Ryder Cup comments and even expounded on what he considers to be a double standard between what he said post-loss in October and what Phil Mickelson said post-loss in 2014.
Reed Rips Furyk, Spieth For Pairing Decisions
“(Mickelson) did it and got praised,” Reed said of Mickelson’s much-publicized calling out of U.S. captain Tom Watson following the matches at Gleneagles. “I did it and got destroyed. It all depends on who the person is, obviously.”
Reed’s whole beef with Furyk, he said, was the lack of communication between the captain and the players as it pertained to the splitting up of multiple successful pairings.
“It was just a lack of communication,” Reed said. “It had nothing to do with hard feelings. Jordan’s an awesome player. Him and I seem to always play really well together, and there were some decisions that were made that I didn’t agree with that Captain (Furyk) thought were right.
“You had to look at the breakdown of all the guys on the team and what was best for the entire team, not just one or two individuals. So you split up Jordan and I, right? Then you split up Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler, who have played great golf together. (Those are) groupings that had been proven successful in that format.”
CANNIZZARO: Has golf’s “Captain America” had his shield tarnished? Patrick Reed exclusively opens up about this year’s Ryder Cup brouhaha he created https://t.co/yWbg7RDbIl via @nypostsports
— NYPost_Cannizzaro (@MarkCannizzaro) November 29, 2018
Reed’s insinuation was that Furyk was attempting to appease Spieth by pairing him up with Thomas, therefore looking out for an individual ahead of the team. Even given that intimation, Reed claimed he and Spieth have no bad blood, that their beef was media-made.
“I have nothing against Jordan, nothing against him at all,” Reed said. “That (perception) is done by the media, that’s not done by how he or I feel.”
Furyk Responds To Reed’s Ryder Cup Comments
Yet when asked if he and Spieth had talked about the much-publicized comments in the two months since the Ryder Cup, Reed offered an interesting response.
“Nope,” Reed said. “He has my number.”
While the rest of the U.S. team has seemingly done their best to put the Ryder Cup dramatics behind them, Reed is not backing down from his initial feelings. How that will serve him in international competitions going forward remains to be seen, but the commonly-held assumption is that Reed better make those teams on merit because he has burned some meaningful bridges.
