The 1st USA Ryder Cup team reply to Patrick Reed says he's 'full of s**t'

Instead of the “strongest team we’ve ever sent to Europe,” which is how it was hailed for months this summer, the 2018 United States Ryder Cup may turn out to be the most dysfunctional. Given the 25 years of embarrassing Ryder Cup failures, there are several candidates but the 2018 group is absolutely joining the race this week and we’re only two days out from their 17.5 to 10.5 blowout loss.

You knew it wouldn’t be long and we now have our first response to Patrick Reed’s critical comments in The New York Times on Sunday night. One team USA source is not happy about Reed taking shots at Jordan Spieth, Tiger Woods, and captain Jim Furyk. The heart of Reed’s complaint centered on the split of the successful Reed-Spieth duo that went 4-1-2 in two previous Cups. Spieth, Reed says, had some sort of problem with him and went into the arms of Justin Thomas, a close friend of Spieth’s since childhood. Reed told the NYT he was blindsided by the spilt (here’s an examination of all of Reed’s complaints, the targets, and why he chose them).

Well, a team USA source has now popped back at Reed in the New York Post, which characterized the person as a non-playing member of the USA group that was in the team room all week.

“He is so full of shit,’’ the team USA source told Mark Cannizzaro. “Blindsided my ass. He begged to play with Tiger.’’

That is certainly a conflicting sentiment! Reed said Tiger was his “second choice” after he learned he wasn’t playing with Spieth.

There’s wild speculation about the identity of this source and amateur investigators on the internet are trying to figure it out like the he/she wrote an anonymous NYT Op-Ed from inside the White House. The assumption is that a non-playing member of the team that’s in team room narrows it to assistant captains and caddies.

The source went further, denouncing Reed as a selfish teammate who didn’t care about the rest of the USA team. He also ripped Reed’s play, which was, in fact, bad!

“He would have shot 83 on his own ball Saturday. He totally screwed Tiger,” this mysterious source said. “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. Unfortunately, that one proved to be too costly for the team to overcome.”

In defense of Reed, that last statement is absurd. A good chunk of the U.S. roster sucked. Some of their best players were underwhelming and didn’t bring the points home they had to. Reed was one of several that played poorly and cannot be isolated as the one “too costly” to overcome.

The source also called Jim Furyk an “unreal” captain, which is debatable. He seemed popular with 11 of the players, but that doesn’t necessarily make someone a great captain. Furyk made a string of questionable tactical choices with his lineups and pairings, and his captain’s picks for this specific course turned out to be a complete whiff.

This should be just the start of the bloodletting. There are now also reports that Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka had to be separated during an argument on Sunday night. There will be more sources and articles and quotes in the coming months, as these players re-surface on the PGA Tour and have to meet the press. Or we could keep getting the back-and-forth every day from now until the Masters, which would be fine. This may turn out to be a historically dysfunctional group.

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