BRADENTON, Fla. – Patrick Reed stayed in the mix Friday at the WGC-Workday Championship despite a few hard shots on his back nine.
Reed got a shot with a top and two water balls in the second consecutive round of 68 that left him three shots back from Brooks Koepka heading into the weekend.
On his worm burn, Reed explained that he recently added more lofts to his 3rd wood so he could get more height on the entrance scenes into the high lawns of Concession. But on the third par-5 hole, Reed tried to hit a low cut around the tree in front of him and came into the ball with too many legs.
“He must have just been hit right in the ground in front of him and he went on,” Reed said.
The ball went through to a fairway bunker, but from 142 yards away he spun his short iron back to 4 feet and made a birdie. As he told chaddy Kessler Karain: “We put it up to the right number. ”
Reed mentioned something else to the reporter on the John Wood Golf Channel course when he climbed out of the bunker. Wood said on the broadcast: “He looked over at me and said with a big smile, ‘I was just trying to give Tiger something to laugh at,'” referring to Woods, who is recovering in a Los Angeles area hospital after a serious car accident earlier in the week.
Reed’s events followed from there.
On his tee shot on the fifth hole, Reed said his hind leg slid down, dragging his ball into the pond. He did well to make a bogey after going up and down from a green bunker.
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Then on the eighth hole, Reed moved in on the right side of the access path and a tough bullet was thrown over the trees and into a well-defended lawn. Despite picking what he thought was enough of a club, his ball came down short of the putting surface and rolled back into the water, leading to a bogey.
“Basically I’m just doing a reset (I have to),” Reed said afterwards. “I felt like I was still making good golf moves and putting on myself the spots you need to attack this golf course. There near the end it was just a kind of couple head scratches. ”