DORAL, Fla. — You might not know a lot about Patrick Reed, and that’s OK, because even his fellow PGA Tour players are somewhat in the dark.
“I don’t know him that well,” Hunter Mahan said Saturday after the third round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral.
“He doesn’t communicate that much. I played with him one time and I don’t know that much about him. I played with him last year at Barclays. He doesn’t talk much. I didn’t find out much about him.”
We’ll know a lot more about the 23-year-old Reed, who’s 4-under par after Saturday’s 69, by day’s end Sunday, when he takes a two-shot lead into the final round on the Blue Monster and tries to stave off the likes of Mahan (2-under), Jason Dufner (2-under) and Tiger Woods (1-under).
Reed has won two tournaments in his career — the 2013 Wyndham Championship and the 2014 Humana Challenge — and he took the 54-hole lead into both and closed the deal.
On Sunday, he will be staring at Woods’ traditional final-round red shirt in the group in front of him all day, but insists he has no problem with that.
“That’s fine,” Reed said. “I’ve seen Tiger a lot on the driving range. Never had the opportunity to play with him and I still haven’t been able to play with him. But, whenever he’s close to the lead, he’s a guy you have to watch out for. But at the same time, I have to go and just play my own game.
“If you have a 54–hole lead, that means you’re playing the best golf of the group through three rounds. I just can’t get ahead of myself.
Of course, anyone would love to win the event, but at the same time you have to go in with the kind of mind-set that if you happen to not get it done, it’s not the end of the world.
“I’ve won twice since August. If I continue doing what I’m supposed to be doing, come Sunday afternoon, hopefully we’re holding the trophy.”
Reed is a pretty cool story. Two years ago, he was Monday qualifying on the PGA Tour trying to get into events and then barely made it onto the Tour through Qualifying School. Now, two wins into a young career, he will play in his first major championship next month at the Masters.
His wife was caddying for him last year, but now that she is pregnant, his brother-in-law is on his bag.
“It’s definitely come very fast,” Reed said.
It has not come fast this year for Woods, who has struggled — until Saturday, when he raced up the leaderboard with a 6-under-par 66, the lowest round of the week and the course record on the newly-redesigned Gil Hanse project.
Just when you’re ready to count Woods out, he fights back and proves you wrong.
It looked like Woods’ chances of winning this event for the eighth time in his career and second consecutive year were left for dead when he was 7-over par through 12 holes of his second round Friday.
His game was going sideways at the time and the notion of being in contention entering Sunday’s final round seemed as realistic as Woods and Sergio Garcia seen sharing dinner at an intimate two-top.
But Woods rallied to get himself back to 5-over par by the end of that second round with a perseverance 73 despite hitting three balls in the water, and on Saturday he lit up the place.
Woods afterward called it “absolutely” his “most complete round” of the year — even better than the 65 he posted a week ago in the third round of the Honda Classic at PGA National, where he withdrew in the final round with back spasms.
“I hit the ball a lot better than I did at Honda last Saturday,” he said. “This was certainly a lot better round. It was nice to get back in the tournament again. I held it together [Friday] — a long day, a long, tough day — and that gave me a chance.”