Watch: Masters champ Patrick Reed snaps at camera crew, refuses to hit shot until they leave
In most sports, the ability of a player to tune out distractions and focus in even the loudest, most raucous arena is a measure of his toughness; consider someone like Larry Bird icing the game-winning free throw in an NBA game or Tom Brady throwing a touchdown pass on the road with thousands of opposing fans screaming as loud as the sound of a jet engine taking off.
Compared to them, golfers are as easily freaked out as mice. The smallest sound in what is supposed to be a gallery as quiet as a morgue will set them off like a firework on the Fourth of July.
Enter Patrick Reed, the reigning Masters champion, at the European Open Thursday.
Reed stood over a chip shot at the 10th hole when he stepped away from the ball, clearly bothered by something.
Nearby, his caddie, Kessler Karain, was angrily gesturing at a camera crew to warn them that something was amiss and would they please knock it off.
Turned out that one of the camera people was idly rattling some loose change in his pocket, and that ever-so-slight clinking of coins may as well have been a combination of nails on a chalkboard for Reed.
Karain went right after the camera guy and said, “You’re rattling change in your pocket. That’s what I’m pointing at you for.”
All that would have been enough in most cases for things to proceed; a sensible person would accept an apology from the cameraman and get on with playing his golf round.
But Reed was not in any mood to be sensible. He just wanted to detonate at someone.
So he turned to the crew and said “You know what? No. I need y’all to to go over there at that side of the green,” he said, pointing to a spot clear across the green from where Reed was lining up his chip. “Camera guy too, sorry. Because he’s part of you. He lost privileges by going like that with change.”
As the crew began to make their way across to their golfer-imposed exile, they apparently weren’t moving fast enough for Reed’s taste.
“Keep going,” Reed said. “I’m not hitting until you get the heck out of here. Like, completely out of here. Ridiculous.”
Warning to all camera crews: Do NOT jingle change in your pocket when Patrick Reed is trying to hit. Watch: https://t.co/VLXmkC3kcD pic.twitter.com/qTj0ZaDKvl
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) July 26, 2018
Reed is certainly not the first golfer to flip out at a cameraman while playing a round.
Phil Mickelson got into it with a cameraman who snapped a picture during his swing at the Masters, and Tiger Woods is practically synonymous with hostility toward media when he’s trying to play golf out there.
But it never ceases to amaze the casual observer just how tightly-wound golfers tend to be.
All the energy golfers have to use to maintain that concentration is terribly unstable … and the slightest provocation can set it all off at once.
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