Patrick Reed: The infuriatingly good side

Patrick Reed can be infuriatingly good.

Every facet of what makes Reed fascinating was on display this week at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. The dark side has been written about plenty, and will be written about more.

So let’s save this space to recognize, if not celebrate, Patrick Reed’s good side.

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Okay, maybe that’s too strong a wide.  His mad genius side, then.

Reed won the Farmers Sunday by five strokes, pulling away from the field with the slow, steady, steam-gathering inexorability of a locomotive leaving a train station.

Make nothing of the fact that, starting the day in a tie for the lead with Carlos Ortiz, he missed two of his first four greens and failed to birdie any of his first five holes. Nobody else did anything either and Reed still led coming to the sixth, which – lo and behold – he eagled. That’s good.

Since Reed appears to be one of those parasitic creatures that grows stronger as his opponents grow weaker, the Farmers was functionally over when that 45-foot eagle putt fell. Reed turned in three-under 33, then picked his way patiently through Torrey’s back nine minefield while his challengers all touched off tripwires.

The result was a good, solid five-stroke win. Few may have been rooting for Reed, but the outcome was one of the most decisive in the long history of this tournament.

Reed lapped the field by 2.48 standard deviations, a walkover by the standards of Torrey Pines history. Over the past 30 years, only two men have extended their domination over the course more thoroughly than Reed did this weekend.

Those two are Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Given the inevitable changing course, equipment and weather conditions, the best way to compare performances over time is to look at standard deviation. It is a measurement of the relative superiority of players against their peers using roughly the same equipment on the same course and in the same weather conditions.

Woods won in 2003 with a four-stroke margin that works out to 2.94 standard deviations better than the field average that week. He repeated in 2008 by eight strokes at 3.70 standard deviations – the most dominant showing in the event’s history – and in 2013 by four strokes at 2.85 standard deviations.

Mickelson won by four strokes in 2000, his performance amounting to 2.82 standard deviations better than the field.

Reed’s unbeatable weapon this weekend was his recovery game. Across the 36 holes he played Saturday and Sunday, he hit fewer than half of his greens in regulation. Yet nine different times Reed turned potential disaster into an up-and-down par, brushing off any hint of trouble as if it were one more Twitter rules expert.

For the week Reed ranked No. 1 in Strokes Gained Around the Green, picking up nearly a full stroke per round via that facet of his game. Is that any good? Yes, actually it is very good. For the 2020 season, Jason Day led the entire Tour in Strokes Gained Around the green … at a bit more than six-tenths of a stroke per round.

There could be no better illustration that — when emotionally cornered — Reed plays golf like a cat toying  with  a mouse he intends to devour than the back nine on Sunday. With much of the TV universe waiting for him to blow up, Reed began by firing a 164-yard iron dead pure toward the flag. Too pure as it turned out; the ball touched down about 15 feet past the flag and one-hopped into the deep rough just past the green.

That left Reed with an uber-delicate third, an 18-foot hack out of the rough to a tight pin. You know, the kind of shot you or I would blow 40-feet past the flag…if we moved it at all. Which was exactly what much of the golf world secretly hoped he would do.

Reed stopped it inside of three feet and dropped his par putt. He was probably smirking as he did so;  with Reed it can sometimes be hard to tell.

On to the 12th, a 505 yard par 4 where Reed let his 200-yard approach slide right into the greenside bunker. Reed flipped it out within a foot for another par.

At the 432 yard 14th, Reed teased his critics one final time. From the center of the fairway, he pulled a short iron into the greenside bunker. That left a touchy 40-foot blast that rolled seven feet past the cup. But what of it? Reed dropped that putt for his third recovery par in five holes.

By then it hardly mattered. His closest pursuer most of the day, Victor Hovland, bogeyed three of the last five holes and finished in a five-way tie for second.

With a birdie at the 71st hole, Tony Finau came to 18 eyeing a chance to par for solo second. But from a perfect fairway lie. Finau went for the green in two, found the pond instead, and walked away with bogey.

For the record, here are the 10 most dominant showings at the Farmers Insurance Classic over the past half century as measured by standard deviation.

Rank      Player                   Year       Std. Dev.

1              Tiger Woods       2008       3.70

2              Tom Watson      1977       3.10

3              Phil Mickelson   1993       2.97

4              Tiger Woods       2003       2.94

5              Tiger Woods       2013       2.85

6              Phil Mickelson   2000       2.82

7              George Burns    1987       2.81

8              George Archer  1971       2.66

9              Peter Jacobsen 1995       2.52

10           Patrick Reed       2021       2.48