Ryder Cup (Golf)

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      Patrick Reed Struggles at the Tour Championship

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      A few weeks ago the golfer was in the I.C.U. “battling” for his life. Now it is his last chance to show he’s ready to join the American side for the Ryder Cup.ATLANTA — Ostensibly, Patrick Reed drove 15 hours from Texas to Georgia on Tuesday in the back of a van to chase the FedEx Cup title and the largest possible share of the $46 million on offer at the season-ending Tour Championship.The truth about Reed’s presence at East Lake Golf Club is far simpler.Two weeks earlier Reed had emerged from what he called “a dark space” and “battling for my life” after nearly a week in a Houston I.C.U. bed with bilateral pneumonia. He came to the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club to add to his FedEx Cup points total and prove to U.S. Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker that his is healthy enough to warrant one of six captain’s picks for the match that begins on Sept. 24 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. Asked if he would be in Atlanta if this wasn’t a Ryder Cup year, Reed answered succinctly: “No.”Stricker watched on Wednesday as Reed completed his first nine holes of golf since the final round of the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis on Aug. 8.“He came out to me when I was on nine and I hit a hybrid to eight feet and I made the putt for him,” Reed said the following day after posting a scrambling two-over-par 72 in the first round of the Tour Championship. “So you know, honestly, the biggest thing is, talking with Stricks and stuff, is just making sure I’m healthy and I think the biggest thing for me this week is just to see kind of where I’m at.“And I know by Ryder Cup my game’s going to be where it needs to be, as long as I feel like my health is where it needs to be and as long as I feel like I can sustain through rounds of golf.”Playing in a fourth consecutive Ryder Cup was the least of the worries the last two weeks. Reed suddenly withdrew from the Northern Trust on Aug. 19 before the first round of the first FedEx Cup playoff event, citing an ankle injury. But he returned home to Houston and was promptly admitted to the hospital. He said the pneumonia hit him in both lungs “like a brick.”“Just all of a sudden I went from feeling OK to literally feeling like I couldn’t breathe and was almost drowning in air,” he said. “It hit me so fast and it was so brutal.”Reed initially told the Golf Channel he had COVID-19, but later retracted it in a vague statement on Twitter: “My primary diagnosis was bilateral pneumonia. I was vaccinated for COVID-19 so I’m not sure if I had the delta variant but I’m just happy to be here.” He said Thursday that the hospital didn’t test him for the coronavirus until he got a negative test result before checking out last week.“Their main priority was to make sure that we fought this pneumonia in both lungs because of how fatal it can be,” he said.“First couple days they were sitting there telling me that make sure you text your family quite a bit, talk to your family, because you just don’t know,” Reed explained. “I mean, this is not good. We’re not in a good spot right now.“With how the hospitals are these days because of Covid and everything that’s going on, it doesn’t matter what’s going on. They won’t allow people in there, so it’s only you in there. So, I’m sitting there and those first two days the only thing that was going through my mind is, I’m not going to be able to tell my kids goodbye. I’m not going to be able to tell them I love them. I’m not going to be able to tell my wife that I love her and give her a hug.”Despite not playing in either of the first two PGA Tour playoff events, Reed still qualified for the last of the 30 spots into the Tour Championship this week when K.H. Lee bogeyed the last hole at the BMW Championship. That allowed him the opportunity to make one last audition before the U.S. Ryder Cup roster is finalized on Wednesday.Normally Reed would be considered a likely pick. However, his health as well as bitterness about pairings after the 2018 event in France have cast doubt on his chances.It’s expected that Stricker will choose Tony Finau, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Harris English. Reed is in consideration primarily with Daniel Berger, Webb Simpson, Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns for the remaining two spots.Reed was clearly not at full strength playing his first full rounds in nearly a month. He hit 10 of 14 fairways off the tee but missed 12 greens in regulation on Thursday. On Friday he was a little more consistent but followed an opening bogey with 15 consecutive pars before finishing with two birdies to shoot one-under-par 69, tied for 26th in the 30-player field at one over par.“The good thing is my short game didn’t leave me,” he said.But Reed believes he can be ready when the Ryder Cup starts in three weeks.“It’s like my third day back swinging a golf club, so there’s going to be rust there, there’s going to be things that you want to obviously not do on the golf course,” Reed said. “But the great thing is I felt like I can play now, I feel like I can do what I’m supposed to do. I feel now it’s just get some reps in and just get the energy level and strength back which just takes a little bit of time.” More

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      European Golf’s Debt to Tony Jacklin

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEuropean Golf’s Debt to Tony JacklinHe won two majors, but he really made his mark helping Europe in the Ryder Cup.Tony Jacklin cheering on the European team as captain at the 1985 Ryder Cup in Warwickshire, England. Credit…Chris Smith/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesJan. 20, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETTony Jacklin of England won the 1969 British Open and a year later the United States Open.He was only 25, but he never won another major championship.The closest he came was in the 1972 British Open when he was tied playing the next-to-last hole. Lee Trevino, the eventual champion, then chipped in for a par. Jacklin finished third.Still, when you think of golf in Europe over the last half century, Jacklin’s name stands out because of the Ryder Cup, the tournament every two years that pits European players against Americans.Jacklin played in it seven times, including in 1969 when he was involved in one of its most famous incidents. He faced a short putt on the final green at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in England that would have tied the match when his opponent, Jack Nicklaus, just gave it to him. It became known as the “concession” and was the first time the event ended in a tie, though the United States retained the Cup as the previous winner.Jacklin was also Europe’s captain four times in the 1980s, when his team broke the Americans’ dominance.As the European Tour begins a new season at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, Jacklin, 76, reflected recently on his career. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.You said you believed you traveled too much in your playing days, but wasn’t there a lot of money on the table?If you wanted to have financial security, you had to play in Japan and Australia at the end of a busy season. It was a balancing act, but you can only play well if mind and body turn up together. And there were too many occasions when the body turned up and the mind wasn’t ready for action. I spread myself too thin. I was playing 28 or 30 [tournaments a year].Were you never the same after Trevino beat you in 1972?It did something to me. I never thought luck played such a big part in it. I witnessed audacious luck the last two days from him. He hit a couple of shots [from off the green] that flew straight in the hole, and he was sort of laughing it all off. It knocked the stuffing out of me.Wasn’t it just one tournament?It’s one tournament, but it was the main tournament in my life. Thank God I’d won one. Otherwise, it would have been a real career-breaker. It changed my outlook on the game. I thought if you worked hard and was really good, that you won.Tony Jacklin after winning the British Open in 1969.Credit…Getty ImagesIt’s been 50 years since you won the U.S. Open. Is there a moment that stands out?I hit a putt on the ninth green from about 30 feet for a birdie. I hit it too hard, and the ball hit the back of the hole, jumping in the air, and dropped in. It was after that putt went in that I felt all the pressure roll off me. I’m not overly religious — I believe in God — but on that final day, I prayed in the morning. Not to win, just to have the strength to get through the day.What is your favorite Ryder Cup memory as a captain?Winning on American soil [in Ohio] for the first time in 1987. There’s only one first, and that was it. It was a heck of a performance by a really great team. We had great team unity. There were journeyman pros on my team who really dug deep.Are you more proud of your accomplishments as a player or as the Ryder Cup captain?It’s like asking, which is your favorite child? They both came at a completely different time in my life.Do people still come up to you and mention the putt Nicklaus conceded?All the time, and the putt becomes four feet, not two. He hollered after me after we both teed off on the last hole. I waited for him, and he said, “Are you nervous?” I said, “I’m petrified.” He said, “I just want you to know I feel the same way.”If you could change anything in the game today, what would it be?I’d like the ball to go 50 yards shorter. I don’t understand how people think it would be a move backwards.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      An American First on the European Tour

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn American First on the European TourThe controversial golfer Patrick Reed is leading the race to become the No. 1 player, which will be settled in Dubai.Patrick Reed in September at the United States Open, where he finished tied for 13th.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesDec. 9, 2020, 5:02 a.m. ETLove him or hate him, Patrick Reed is poised to become the first American to be Europe’s top golfer.The 30-year-old Texan, who shot to fame at the 2016 Ryder Cup as “Captain America,” exciting fans with his aggressive play and on-course antics, holds the lead in the Race to Dubai rankings that come to a close next week at the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, at Jumeirah Golf Estates from Wednesday through Sunday.While Reed has been a polarizing figure in American golf, fans in Europe love him. He’s found a warm embrace on the European Tour, which made him an honorary lifetime member after his 2018 Masters win. He also enjoys the exchanges with European fans, who have largely moved on from his 2014 Ryder Cup performance where he goaded and shushed spectators. Those same fans now applaud his fiery competitive edge.Besides, taking his game worldwide was always in his plans, he said, and that means playing the European Tour. As he said in October at the BMW PGA Championship in England: “I feel like the more support we can get, especially from guys from the States, the better. That’s one reason why I always come over and play, is because I know how important it is for our games to travel.”He said last week that he felt a special connection with European fans.“I think it started in 2014 at Gleneagles in Scotland,” he said, referring to the Ryder Cup. “For the first time, I realized that they understood my humor, and the competitor I am.”He said the closing ceremony was very special to him.“They announced Tom Watson, and I looked at the thousands and thousands of European fans, waves and waves of people roaring on their feet for Tom Watson, our American captain, in defeat,” Reed said. “And it really moved me. I had never seen anything like that. They loved him no matter what country he came from. I felt like, I want to be like him.”Patrick Reed, center, at the 2014 Ryder Cup, talking with Tom Watson, left, the captain for the United States.Credit…Montana Pritchard/The PGA of America, via Getty ImagesFans in Europe appreciate that, by playing in the tour, he helps build better golf there. But things are different in the United States, where Reed has earned critics on and off the course, starting in 2014 when he boldly proclaimed he was one of the top five players in the world. It wasn’t true; he was No. 20 in the rankings at the time. Yet he has since been forever linked to that brash claim.Most recently he was criticized last December for seemingly improving his lie in a waste bunker when his club brushed away sand behind his ball at the 11th hole at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. While Reed said that it was unintentional and that he did not notice that his club had moved any sand, he was penalized two shots.He said afterward that after seeing the video, he accepted the penalty, “but it wasn’t because of any intent.”“I thought I was far enough away,” he said. “I think with a different camera angle, they would have realized that. It was not improving the lie because it was far enough away from the golf ball.”Taunts of “cheater” soon followed him to tournaments from Hawaii to California. In February, his fellow American Brooks Koepka, a 2018 Ryder Cup teammate, called him out on it.Patrick Reed was penalized two shots last year at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas for improving his lie in a bunker.Credit…Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images“I don’t know what he was doing — building sand castles in the sand — but, you know, you know where your club is,” Koepka said in an interview with SiriusXM. “I mean, I took three months off, and I can promise you I know if I touch sand. If you look at the video, obviously he grazes the sand twice and then he still chops down on it.” Cameron Smith of Australia also called Reed a cheat.Reed has become a master at tuning out the noise.“The biggest thing for me is any time you go to the golf course, pop in my headphones, get to work and just really get in tune with every golf shot I hit because at the end of the day you can’t listen to what other people are saying,” Reed said at the WGC-Mexico Championship in February.To the end, for Reed to win the Race to Dubai and make European Tour history, he has to fend off Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, and Lee Westwood, who are the next three in points. Fleetwood won the Race to Dubai in 2017 and has finished second and third in the rankings in the past two years.Morikawa is in the hunt to win without having played one game in Europe this year. As an affiliate member of the tour, which allows players to pay a fee for tour status, points may be earned at majors and other events and applied to the Race to Dubai.Westwood is hoping to win the Race to Dubai for the third time. “I’ve had some success in Dubai over the years,” he said. “It’s a big honor for any player. I’ve done it twice before, so it’s great to have another chance again this year.”Ahead in points, Reed hopes this will be his year.“I came close in 2018,” he said. “So you bet I will do my best to earn that No. 1 spot.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More