Cool albatross from Patrick Reed which reminds me of the time I hung out with Patrick Reed which serves as the basis for why I like him.
A lot of people hate his guts.
Whatever.
Nice albatross today despite a bad shirt.
My story goes something like this: I was a last second add to the first LIV Pro Am in Chicago in 2022. I played 18 with a close buddy the week before event, and he was tasked with filling the field of amateurs. It’s a combination of sponsorships and then “celebrities” and the sponsorships were running like 40 grand or something crazy.
They sold the sponsorships out but then a couple of the celebrities that committed ended up backing out. Or some shit came up. Or something fell through. I just know the Monday week of event, my pal calls me and says they have an open spot and if they can’t find a sponsor to slide pay for it by end of the day, then he’s going to list me as a local celebrity.
Great friend I tell you guys. No fucking joke what a good buddy.
Anyways turns out $40,000 is a hard sell night of so I end up getting a spot in the Pro Am and that includes the Wednesday night dinner into the Thursday event/practice round.
So Wednesday dinner comes around and I don’t know how to describe this better than like a big networking event with the LIV golfers and there must be something in their contracts that says they have to go to these dinners and mingle. Because it was kinda obvious these guys were working off a time commitment and lingering around the open bar pretty hard. Approachable, sure. But it’s not normal by traditional standards to have all these golfers together socializing. So they end up standing around in their own circles of 3-5 golfers and caddies, all within maybe 75-100 feet of the two open bar stations.
I think they were wearing name tags.
Anyways what stands out in this scene is that Patrick Reed was immersed in a group of members at Rich Harvest, which was the hosting club. They had a handful of guys pay for a sponsorship in the Pro-Am. So they’re hanging around after the dinner have drinks and there’s Patrick Reed bullshitting with these guys like one of the boys while a good number of the rest of his colleagues were keeping to themselves. Reed was a man of the people.
I was summoned from a friend.
You gotta meet Patrick.
What’s up dude?
I’ve told this story a thousand times. I’ll keep it short again. He was mesmerized that I play golf as a 10 handicap. I told him I was fighting to get below 9. He said I was INSANE for enjoying myself on a golf course. That I should be doing anything else with my time if I was consistently hovering in the mid 80s. Nevermind the decade+ it’s taken me to get there. Just assume you’re staring down a Masters champion and he’s telling you that he would rather not play golf than be as bad as you. It was funny. It was good banter and shit talk. I enjoy that kinda stuff. We ended up talking about the Astros and what it’s like being an honorary member at Augusta National. And then he met my wife and was super cool and asked about her job and shit you shouldn’t really care about unless you’re actually trying to make other people feel comfortable. And I remember Patrick Reed kinda going out of his way like that to be relatable and that was super cool because it was the complete opposite of what he was described to be and that was nice.
The story keeps going as we hung out that night, but I’ve told enough now to make my point, which is that I think Patrick Reed gets a raw deal because he’s very relatable in my opinion.
A lot of people reading this use a foot wedge.
A lof of us have played the wrong ball and improved a lie.
And maybe some of us have stolen cash from teammates? I hope not. Seriously. But maybe some of you have done worse?
And maybe so have I?
I haven’t.
But have you?
Possibly.
My point is it’s pretty hard to judge people.
My second point is that Patrick Reed was cool when we hung out that one time
And then of course my third point is nice albatross.