Patrick Reed went on a fantastic rant earlier this week at the Masters about his putter after an opening 71.
“The flatstick is on vacation and needs to kind of show up,” said Reed. “It needs to get on a flight and meet me here.”
By Saturday’s 3-under-par 69 round at Augusta National, Reed said his putter had at least made it to Georgia.
“Yeah, it might be in the zip code,” said Reed. “The putter the first few days was as cold as it's been in a long time, and today I made some quality putts, made some putts that I felt like I needed to make.”
The 2018 Masters champion tends to fly under the radar these days in Augusta, and he’s fine with that. He’ll enter the final round at 6 under, six strokes behind leader Rory McIlroy in a share of fourth.
Reed’s lowest round in 11 starts at the Masters is 66 (2018) and his lowest final round is 68 (2023).
“If my lowest on Sunday is 68,” said Reed, “I'm thinking for me to be able to win this golf tournament, I've got to shoot my lowest round I've ever shot on Sunday out here. Which, honestly, I feel like my golf game is better than it's ever been at Augusta, so that being said, just needed that putter to really wake up.”
The 34-year-old Reed said that even when he won here seven years ago, he was hesitant to hit the fade. Now he feels confident to go either way if needed.
“I feel like that's the biggest difference between now and '18 is if I putted like I did in '18, this would be a whole different story,” said Reed. “I wouldn't have shot very many shots yesterday or the day before with how I felt like I was hitting it.
“The game is close. Just need to keep on giving myself opportunities and quality opportunities, and like I said, just clean up a couple mistakes I had today that were more mental mistakes really than anything else.”
Reed, who used to wear red and black on Sundays like Tiger Woods before joining LIV Golf, said the mental errors he made in the third round are something Woods never did.
“You see all these guys chasing distance, but Tiger Woods would never beat himself," said Reed. "He'd put himself in the right spots. He'd give himself an opportunity to shoot the lowest scores possible, and because of that … you're never going to get a freebie playing against him.
“You play against some of these other guys, when they're on, they're on, but everyone – I done it twice today. Mental errors, you're giving a freebie back to the field. Tiger never did that. That just ...
