As runs of form go, you can’t get much better than what we’ve seen Patrick Reed produce over the last three weeks. A win at the Dubai Desert Classic towards the end of January. A tie for second the following week at the Bahrain Championship. And then, this past weekend, we watched as he bagged another win at the Qatar Masters. Put simply, it’s been a clinic as to what separates your general touring professional from those serial winners who’ve been there and done it at the very highest level.
As impressive as these performances have been, however, I can’t help but feel as though they have wider implications than merely acknowledging that Reed has been playing incredibly well. Namely, because we can’t ignore the overall context within which this run of form has been occurring.
Since making his announcement in the wake of his win at the Dubai Desert Classic that he would be leaving LIV and seeking to return to the PGA Tour, the pieces quickly fell into place as to why Patrick had put his name down for every leg of the DP World Tour’s whistle-stop expedition through the desert. He wants a full PGA Tour card back in his wallet. A top-10 finish in the Race to Dubai will secure that for him. So, Reed went out to get himself nicely situated near the front of the pack to help make that happen. And given that he’s now leading the Race to Dubai, and all but guaranteed his place in that precious top-10, one would have to say that he’s outdone himself.
Yet, whilst this whole endeavour is about leaving his time with LIV in the rearview mirror, the three weeks that Patrick Reed has just put down shines a damning light on the fundamental flaw that will forever undermine LIV’s efforts to be anything other than a gimmick. It’s that money can’t buy meaning. And given that ‘money’ is all that LIV has to offer, you can see how that might be a problem.
Take their season-opening event in Riyadh last week. It had the green lasers shooting off into the night sky. The novelty of the action taking place under floodlights. And, as always, the ever-present music was playing incessantly in the background in an effort to mask the stony silence that would’ve otherwise prevailed had it not been there.
Once everything was all said and done, though, and the show was packed up to begin making the trek down under to Adelaide, all I saw spoken about was how much money Elvis Smylie had won – we’re told, in and around $7million, in total. It’s a staggering amount of money, one that positively dwarfs the near-$1.9million that Patrick Reed has earned in the last three weeks for, again, two wins and a tie for second.
Yet, it’s that glaring discrepancy between the two winnings that, ultimately, proves what I’m saying, that money can’t buy that sense of ‘meaning’ we all need to feel fulfilled. Because if Patrick Reed cared only about money, the logical thing for him to do would’ve been to sign whatever contract LIV were willing to offer him and preserve his opportunity to keep playing for such colossal purses. But he didn’t. Instead, he chose to go down the route that he’s currently pursuing, one that, he hopes, will lead him back to the PGA Tour.
Were you to take a cynical outlook, you might make the argument that it’s a lot easier for someone like Patrick Reed to go looking for meaning now that he’s lined his pockets with whatever money he’s both received and won since departing for LIV in 2022 – and I’d see your point. On the other hand, though, you could just as easily argue that because money, you’d assume, isn’t an issue for Reed, the fact that he’s chosen to return to the DP World Tour and, eventually, the PGA Tour actually speaks volumes.
Because he had the chance to keep using a broken ATM, one that would spit out an endless supply of $100 bills whenever he pressed the right button, and keep doing so until the bank cottoned on and closed the machine. But, instead, he decided to go to the bank across the road, one where the ATM isn’t broken, and where whatever money he’s able to get out is that which he’s had to earn. And he’s all the happier for it.
Because make no mistake about it, these two wins from the last few weeks mean more to Patrick than anything he accomplished or could have accomplished with LIV. Those trophies carry a meaning, a history, and a prestigious weight to them that no amount of oil money could ever buy. And LIV know that. It’s why they’ve yielded to the demand of the OWGR body (Official World Golf Ranking) to have their events played out over 72-holes as opposed to 54 – which, let’s not forget, is the very basis for their name. It’s because they need to offer their players something more than money. They need to offer them world ranking points. Why? Because that’s the only way the majority of them can feasibly have any chance of getting into the Majors – the most meaningful and history-laden tournaments in the game.
And if you aren’t playing in the Majors or, at the very least, playing to get into them? That probably leads you to the same inenviable place where not only Patrick Reed perhaps found himself recently, but so too the likes of Brooks Koepka, Kevin Na, and Hudson Swafford.
A place where you’re left asking yourself: “What’s the point?”
