Patrick Reed continues to embrace being golf's biggest villain

You would think Patrick Reed might be distracted by all the hoopla surrounding his blatant rule-breaking at the 2019 Hero World Challenge, improving his lie out of the bunker for all the world to see.

At the Presidents Cup in Australia, the crowd is relentless, taunting him with all kinds of heckling about using a shovel in his golf bag and a new nickname, The Excavator.

So what does Reed do? As usual, he leans into it.

On Thursday, while playing fouresomes with Webb Simpson, he knocked in a birdie and gave a hand-to-ear move to the crowd and then used his putter to pretend to shovel.

That’s a move straight out of the WWE:

There’s also this report from Australian Golf Digest about a moment on Thursday between Reed and International team member Cameron Smith, who had said earlier in the week that he doesn’t “have any sympathy for anyone that cheats”:

Left disappointed that a fiery showdown between the two hadn’t eventuated, fans greenside got what they paid for when they spotted Reed, after draining a crucial birdie putt to halve the hole, making a beeline straight to the sixth tee via Smith. While no words were exchanged between the two players, they were seen “deliberately” bumping into each other in a clash of shoulders, with one witness referring to it as a “love tap” that drew a wry grin from Smith.

Everyone wants to see Smith and Reed play each other in singles, and that’s exactly what I’d bet Reed would want.

This is what he does — he embraces the villain role and doesn’t flinch when criticism comes his way. He wore his Masters green jacket everywhere and didn’t seem to care if anyone called him out for it. During the Ryder Cup, he screams and taunts and shushes the gallery. It’s true that some golf fans hate it, but look at the entertainment that comes with his act.

It’s rare to see someone thrive under that kind of pressure, but Reed seems to feed off of it. We’ll see if that’s true the rest of the way at Royal Melbourne.