My favorite wrestlers were always villains.
Ric Flair. Hollywood Hogan. Randy Savage, when he wasn’t caught up in a contrived babyface run.
Same thing in the movies: the truly great villains — the ones you quietly root for — are always the greatest characters. Darth Vader. Hannibal Lecter. Hans Gruber. They rarely win out in the end, of course. But there is an art to their criminality, a grace to their conniving, that is no less magnetic than pure-hearted heroics. And when those pure-hearted heroics win out, the truly great villain’s defeat delivers resignation more than joy — eh, well, it was fun while it lasted — and sometimes, even, a measure of newfound respect for the vanquisher.
So why is Patrick Reed so unlikable?
If there was any doubt, then Reed’s deception-laden victory at the Farmers Insurance Open cemented him as golf’s preeminent bad guy. The details of his third-round declaration of embedded ball relief need not be relitigated here, but suffice it to say that when the best defense of the episode (indeed, Reed’s own defense, apparently) is that others might also have violated the rule, innocence is a difficult conclusion to draw.
This is, of course, not Reed’s first brush with depravity. There was Bunkergate at the 2019 Hero World Challenge (at a tournament a few months later, a fan was thrown out for asking Reed to autograph his shovel). There was caddie Kessler Karain belting a fan at the 2019 Presidents Cup. There was the time Reed booted a European Tour camera crew in 2018. There was his use of a homophobic slur at the WGC-HSBC Champions in 2014. And that’s just his record as a professional, which was preceded by allegations of strokes-shaving and putter-stealing.
Through it all, Reed has been unapologetic. “[A]t the end of the day, when you finish a round and the head rules official comes up to you and has the video and shows everything that went down to the whole group and says that you’ve done this perfectly, you did this the exact right way, the protocols you did were spot on,” said Reed, “at that point, you know, I feel great about it.”
Bad behavior and no accountability certainly are the stuff of great villainy — and yet, Reed is no great villain. His win at Torrey Pines brought no cheers. Reed isn’t one of the ones that people love to hate; they just hate him. There is no charisma about him, no art to his form. Reed’s villainy is no less two-dimensional than the staid, copied-and-pasted “perfect gentlemen” rap that the PGA Tour gives all its players. Reed is just the other side of a boring coin.
Undeniably, golf would benefit from a villain — whether Reed or anyone else. In a sport that’s always been marked by characters, the cast of today’s PGA Tour is conspicuously boring. Great villains make things interesting on their own, but they also elevate others by allowing themselves to suffer defeat now and again: there’s no Ricky Steamboat without Ric Flair, and there’s no Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader. As a legitimate villain, Reed could “put over” other golfers no less than Flair doing a job.
But first, that would require Reed to get “over” with fans. He would have to be the one fans love to hate. And they don’t. Because Reed isn’t a great bad guy. He’s just bad. Granted, it’s not the same type of boring personality that dominates the Tour; it’s just a different type of boring.
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