SAN DIEGO – Patrick Reed’s internal clock must have been buzzing.
On cue, Captain America arrived at Torrey Pines playing the kind of golf fans across the globe have come to expect during a Ryder Cup year. It’s what Reed does when a team room and the intensity of the matches looms.
On a postcard-perfect afternoon above Black’s Beach, Reed dismantled the North Course, which historically is the more user-friendly of the two layouts employed at the Farmers Insurance Open.
But if the North is where players go to feast, Reed’s opening 64 was still impressive. He birdied four of his first seven holes, added three consecutive birdies after the turn and closed with another at No. 17.
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Perhaps a better assessment was how easy it all looked. How close did he even come to a bogey?
“On No. 4 today, had a 35-footer for birdie and hit a great first putt, missed it 3 feet to the right and had a 3-footer [for par], but that’s about it. That was the closest to a bogey, having a chance for a 3-putt, but besides that, everything else was pretty easy,” Reed shrugged.
If Thursday’s round was easy, however, his journey back to the top of a PGA Tour leaderboard was not.
Although the eight-time Tour winner has never really had anything approaching a real slump since joining the circuit, he decided late last year that something needed to change.
The week after last fall’s U.S. Open, Reed started working with a new swing coach, David Leadbetter, in search of “clarity” in his golf swing.
“Knowing kind of what each shot is. Like when I hit the ball left, kind of knowing what it is in my swing,” he said. “At this level, if you’re able to know that, then you’re able to kind of fix it on the golf course and you’re not having to wait until the round’s completely done in order to try to get the ball on track.”
That’s not to say that everything with Leadbetter immediately clicked. “No, not at all,” he laughed.
Reed posted a pair of third-place finishes on the European Tour last fall and added a tie for 10th at the Masters in November, but in two starts this year he missed the cut last week in Palm Springs and finished 21st out of 41 players at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
“I’ve been swinging one way basically my whole life and having to change that and make the change is obviously tough,” he said. “There’s a lot of work going on, not just on the golf course but also at home and doing drills, stuff like that, just trying to dial it in and get it more locked in. It’s been a tough change.”
While Thursday’s 64, which was good for a share of the lead with Alex Noren, was encouraging, it was an impromptu trip to a local range on Monday that gave Reed confidence that he’s on the right path.
Officials closed Torrey Pines early Monday because of a winter storm that moved across the area bringing heavy rain, fierce winds and hail, but Reed really isn’t one to just sit around.
“It would drive me nuts just sitting there,” Reed smiled. “With my coach there, we were able to kind of focus on technique, not really worry about ball flight. It was almost like hitting into a net, but actually out there in the 50 mph winds. Good thing is, the swing actually felt really good when we were working on it in those conditions, so when I came over and started playing in normal conditions, it seemed to click a little easier.”
Reed got off to a blazing start early last year with a victory at the WGC-Mexico Championship and a runner-up showing in Maui, but then came the pandemic and a three-month quarantine and, perhaps most important to Reed, the postponement of the Ryder Cup to 2021. There may be no correlation between his play and the postponement, but following quarantine Reed never really contended again.
With the matches now looming in September and another chance to pad his legacy as the U.S. side’s emotional heart and soul, a day like Thursday at Torrey Pines is exactly what one would expect from Captain America.
