What’s in the Bag: Gritty Patrick Reed Outplays Favorites and Earns a Green Jacket

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There’s an inherent fairness in golf. The person who shoots the lowest score wins. No replays. No style points. No popularity contest.

Patrick Reed won the 2018 Masters on Sunday evening and slipped into the famous green jacket even though many golf fans were openly rooting against the brash “Captain America,” a nickname he earned at the Ryder Cup. The 27-year-old Texas native won his first major championship as a front runner after a 67 on Saturday made him the 54-hole leader.

It seemed that no one anticipated or wanted this outcome, except Reed himself, his caddie and a handful of others closest to him.

On Masters Sunday an unflinching Reed withstood heroic charges from the highly popular Rickie Fowler (67) and Jordan Spieth (64), the 2015 Masters champion. He also stared down his playing partner Rory McIlroy (74), the fan and betting favorite for so many.

Grinding out a 71 to finish at 15 under, Reed surprised and impressed onlookers by handling the suffocating pressure better than Rory, who still needs a green jacket to become the sixth man to complete the career Grand Slam.

“I just went out there and just tried to play golf the best I could,” Reed said, “and tried to stay in the moment and not worry about everything else.”

It worked. He closed out a major win the first time he had a legitimate chance.

For now, Reed is unlikely to win any popularity contests. But he did win a coveted green jacket because golf favors the person who shoots the lowest score. By that standard, Patrick Reed is as deserving as any Masters champion in history.

Patrick Reed’s Clubs
(As reported by PGATOUR.COM)

What’s in Patrick Reed’s bag? A better question might be, “What’s not in his bag?”

You could say Reed has a bag full of surprises, because his equipment setup reveals the possibilities of mixing and matching clubs from a range of companies. Five to be exact—PING, Nike, Titleist, Callaway and Artisan.

Reed left Callaway earlier this year and has not signed with another club maker. That freedom allowed the new Masters champion to assemble his 14 favorite clubs at this juncture of his career, which included an old Nike 3-wood and a mixed set of wedges that served him well at Augusta National.

Reed also recently switched to the Titleist Pro V1 ball and smoothly rolled it across those undulating Augusta greens with an Odyssey White Hot Pro 3 putter.

Here’s a look at the unorthodox equipment approach that helped Patrick Reed win his first major championship.

Driver: PING G400 LST (10 degrees) with Aldila Rogue Silver 125MSI 70X shaft

3-Wood: Nike VR Pro Limited Edition (15 degrees) with Aldila Rogue Silver 80X shaft

Irons: Titleist 716 T-MB (3-iron) with True Temper Dynamic Gold 120 X100 shaft; Callaway X Forged 13 (4-iron) with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shaft; Callaway MB1 (5-PW) with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts

Wedges: Artisan (51 and 56 degrees) with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shafts; Titleist Vokey Design SM5 (61 degrees) with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft

Putter: Odyssey White Hot Pro 3

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

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Neil Sagebiel

Neil Sagebiel is a golf writer and author of two golf books published by St. Martin's Press, THE LONGEST SHOT and DRAW IN THE DUNES. He lives in Floyd, Virginia.
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