Patrick Reed trolled the Presidents Cup crowd with shovel gesture

Patrick Reed is 0-2 in his 2019 Presidents Cup matches, but that didn’t stop him from trolling the crowd at Royal Melbourne.

Patrick Reed just can’t seem to leave well enough alone, can he? The player known fondly as “Captain America” (or not, anymore) for his heroics in Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup matches past is still as brash and bold as ever, trolling the crowd at Royal Melbourne despite a pretty rough record this week. Hey, at least he’s good for the content machine.

Quick recap time: Patrick Reed is 0-2 through the first two days of the 2019 Presidents Cup, teaming with Webb Simpson both times. The American duo was beaten 1-up on day one by C.T. Pan and Hideki Matsuyama, a match in which Reed and Simpson never led and only found themselves tied after three holes. Then, they were beaten even more soundly on day two, losing 3&2 against Abraham Ancer and Marc Leishman.

Hey, at least the Americans led after the first hole before losing seven of the next 15 they would actually get to play. But don’t let the drubbing allow you to think that a guy like Patrick Reed might eat his humble pie and move on quietly. No, that just wouldn’t be his style.

To be fair, the Aussie fans have been giving it to Reed loudly and frequently, not that he’s ever been a particularly hard target. So it only came naturally that when Reed sank his birdie putt on the par-4 11th, with one fan yelling “Miss!” as it rolled, that he fired right back at them.

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Look, it would be easy for me to pile on to Patrick Reed here, for his excessive hubris in a match that his side was still losing by two holes. It would be easy for me to mention how acknowledging his bunker fiasco from the Hero World Challenge is never going to do him any image favors. But that’s not what I’m going to do.

Here’s the honest answer: I loved it. Golf takes itself so seriously, and while I absolutely think that what Patrick Reed did in the Bahamas was wrong at best (and blatant cheating at worst), I also recognize that it’s over. He’s not going to get retroactively DQ’d from an unofficial tournament for what happened, and he’ll have to carry that on his reputation in every event he plays for the foreseeable future.

These competitions are a time to have fun, a time when we get to treat golf like every other team sport on the planet, which includes getting a little more bombastic, riling up the crowd and just generally letting some of the stuffiness go by the wayside. I laughed when Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods dropped their putters in unison when they won their match, with JT screaming “I LOVE ME SOME ME!” And yeah, I laughed when Patrick Reed trolled the Australian fans right back. It’s not like this should be some big surprise.

I’ll save the pearl clutching for something that really matters. This week at the Presidents Cup is supposed to be fun. And frankly, for an American team that has gotten pretty soundly beaten so far, a little more of that can’t hurt.