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Patrick Reed on the Masters on Friday.
getty photos
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Like many gamers in what within the early going at the least was a wet, windy and wild Masters, Patrick Reed was unable to finish his opening spherical Thursday. When darkness pressured him and his enjoying companions, Sungjae Im and Kurt Kitayama, off they course, they had been two-thirds of the way in which down the par-5 fifteenth. When play resumed at 7:50 a.m. Friday, Reed, who at that time was two beneath on his spherical and squarely within the hunt, had 80 yards left from the left tough, from the place he missed the inexperienced simply lengthy. He took two putts from there and made par. On the par-3 sixteenth, Reed flared his tee shot vast proper, greater than 50 ft from his mark — “poor swing,” he stated later — and three-putted from the perimeter. Bogey.
Then got here the par-4 seventeenth, the place a 283-yard drive up the proper facet of the golf green left Reed 171 to a back-right pin and immediately into the blinding solar. Reed’s method was on line, flying immediately over the stick, however lengthy. It bounded as soon as on the again inexperienced and down into the gathering space behind it, leaving him one of many hardest chips on the course, even for the proprietor of a few of the softest fingers in golf. Reed’s bump-and-run try again up the slope stopped simply wanting the placing floor, and two putts later, he had made a 5.
The house gap was even messier. Reed’s blocked drive burrowed into the trunk of a tree, forcing him to take an unplayable and resulting in a double-bogey 6. Reed had performed the closing three holes of his opening spherical in 4 over.
“A shock to the system,” he later stated of his morning’s tough begin. “Intestine punch, for positive.”
However in his second spherical, Reed would punch again. In a few of the wickedest conditions a Masters subject has ever confronted, Reed made three birdies and simply two bogeys to publish a two-under 70, which tied for the second-lowest spherical of the day (Ludvig Aberg managed a 69) and was greater than 5 strokes higher than the sphere common. At day’s finish, Reed had climbed again to even par for the event and 6 off the lead. The 2016 green-jacket winner was again within the combine.
Following his second spherical, Reed supplied an in depth deconstruction of the 21-and-change holes he had performed. He stated he was happy with how he managed his sport within the gusts, throttling again on some tee photographs to make sure he discovered the golf green and committing to membership picks. “It’s very straightforward to get guidey when it will get windy like this, particularly round a golf course like this,” Reed stated. “When that occurs, Augusta Nationwide simply completely will destroy you.”
Like the remainder of the sphere, Reed had his ups and downs Friday, however one gap specifically caught in his craw: how the seventeenth had handled him on his first go-around.
“Unhealthy break there,” he stated. “Felt like I performed 17 precisely how I wished to.”
However Reed didn’t go away it there.
“One evening, 17 on this golf course goes to vanish, and I’m going to be the one which does it,” he stated. “I hit an ideal drive this morning, hit the iron shot precisely how I wished to and I used to be nearer to 18 tee field than I used to be 17 inexperienced.
“These issues are what drive me nuts is hitting high quality golf photographs and strolling off with bogey.”
Reed isn’t the primary participant to tweak the seventeenth gap — heck, even the course’s designer, Alister MacKenzie, thought the penultimate gap can be an acquired style, due to the low-running method shot for which its sloping inexperienced calls. “Till gamers have discovered to play the specified shot,” MacKenzie wrote, “this can undoubtedly be one of the fiercely criticized holes.” In 1999, when the outlet was lengthened by 25 yards and in addition narrowed, not all gamers beloved the adjustments, contending that the inexperienced was too extreme to carry with a mid-iron. “Seventeen is ridiculous,” three-time champion Gary Participant stated that yr. “Bobby Jones would flip in his grave.”
To date this week, the seventeenth is enjoying because the ninth-toughest gap with a 4.204 scoring common (as of noon Saturday). It has yielded one eagle, 12 birdies and 50 bogeys or worse.
Reed started his third spherical at 1:35 p.m.. enjoying alongside Adam Schenk. He bogeyed the primary gap, birdied the second and as of this writing was nonetheless six off the lead.
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