Pros and cons of Tiger Woods’ potential Presidents Cup picks

Patrick Reed

Pros

Tiger Woods has to figure out which version of Patrick Reed will show up at Royal Melbourne should he pick him.

Will it be “Captain America,” the player who went 6-1-2 over the 2014 and 2016 Ryder Cups and beat Rory McIlroy in singles, shushing the partisan European crowd while he did it?

Reed has represented the United States at the last three Ryder Cups and the last two Presidents Cups. In 2017, he won 3.5 points in five matches for Team USA, reprising his partnership with Jordan Spieth to overwhelm the Internationals on the way to a 19-11 American win.

Reed has been in solid form as of late, winning the Northern Trust in August, his first victory since his Masters triumph in 2018. He’s also coming off a top-10 finish at the WGC-HSBC Champions last week.

Cons

The 2014 and 2016 version of Reed was “Captain America.” The 2018 version, though, threatened to tear apart the American team and erased all the goodwill he had generated from his past appearances.

Reed arrived in Paris last year expecting to be paired with Spieth yet again. Instead, captain Jim Furyk put him with Woods for two matches. The result was a disaster, as the Reed-Woods team last both matches they played together.

Afterward, Reed accused Furyk of blindsiding him by splitting him up from Spieth. But the rest of the team wasn’t having any of it. “He is so full of s–t,” a fellow player told the New York Post. “He totally screwed Tiger. He has no clue how to play team golf. I saw firsthand how bad of a team player he was. Eleven players understood the concept of team golf and only one didn’t.”

Reed’s friends in the American locker room are few and far between, and Woods saw for himself how one player can cost the entire team.