By ADAM SCHUPAK
CROMWELL, Conn. — Patrick Reed is hungry to make cuts on the PGA Tour.
As a nonexempt player without a guaranteed place on any major tour, every paycheck brings him closer to earning future playing privileges. But dinner is on the line too, his fiancée, Justine Karain, explained. Make the cut and they celebrate with steak; fail and they feast on peanut butter and jelly.
“I want red meat tonight,” Karain, who doubles as Reed’s caddie, said Saturday before the third round of the Travelers Championship at T.P.C. River Highlands.
First the two woke at 4:30 a.m. and had to complete 17 holes of the rain-delayed second round. Reed shot a 66 to survive the cut. But hold those dinner plans. With 88 golfers making the 36-hole cut at 140, Reed’s reservations for two were in question because there was to be a second cut, to the top 70, after the third round.
Reed responded with a two-under 68 in the third round that put him at three under over all. He may not catch the co-leaders, Roland Thatcher (65) and Brian Davis (64), who hold a two-shot lead at 12 under heading into the final round. But all Reed could think about Saturday night was a good night’s sleep; his steak dinner would have to wait.
“We’re probably just going to pick up a pizza on the way home so we can go to bed,” Reed said.
Reed, 21, was a first-team all-American last year at the two-time N.C.A.A. champion Augusta State, but he was eliminated in the second stage of the PGA Tour’s qualifying school. Since April, he has been traveling to every tour event that isn’t an invitational, trying to qualify for one of four open spots available on Monday. Reed stayed 4 for 4 in the heart-tugging, white-knuckle drama that is Monday qualifying by shooting a 65 this week.
“We know how it goes,” Karain said. “You go low or you go home.”
Before the modern era of the top-125 exempt list began in 1982, players like Reed were common. Those who made their living on Mondays were called rabbits, a term established pros used to describe nonexempt players who had only this desperate route to qualify for a spot and consequently hopped from event to event, week after week.
Reed caught a break in April when he was pulled off the third green of a Monday qualifier and given a sponsor’s invitation into the Valero Texas Open. He made the cut and finished tied for 35th. After Sunday’s final round, Reed and Karain drove nine and a half hours to the next event in New Orleans, arriving at 2:45 a.m. He shot a 66 to get in a four-man playoff for three spots that Monday, then secured his place by hitting an 8-iron to 2 feet to make birdie.
After pocketing a career-best $51,840 that week, Reed hopped a flight to Greenville, S.C., on April 29, and earned a spot in the Wells Fargo Championship.
“My butt is getting flatter because there’s been of a lot of driving and a lot less sleep, and it’s just been very tiring,” he said after shooting a 65 in the first round in Charlotte.
Reed is not alone in trying to beat the odds and earn tour privileges through Monday qualifiers and sponsors’ exemptions. John Peterson, the 2011 N.C.A.A. champion from Louisiana State, is in a similar predicament as a nonexempt player. He earned his entry into the Travelers Championship with a top-10 finish last week. He does not know where he will be competing next week, but he can make reservations for next year’s first two majors — the Masters and the United States Open — because of his tie for fourth place at last weekend’s Open.
Peterson can trade road warrior stories with Reed. Peterson earned one of the four open spots for the St. Jude Classic in Memphis on the first weekend of June. A day later, he was in Springfield, Ohio, for the 36-hole United States Open sectional qualifier and won a spot in the national championship. He returned to Memphis and made the cut. On the 72nd hole of the Open, Peterson faced a 20-foot birdie putt that could have won him admission to a new world. “I looked up at the board,” he said. “If I one-putt, I can tie for the lead, or I can two-putt and get to come back next year and make the Masters. But if I three-putt, nothing happens. So I decided, yeah, I’m just going to lag this thing up there.”
That is how badly Peterson wants to secure future playing privileges. Until he qualified for the St. Jude Classic and the Open, he had planned on playing in two events on the N.G.A. Pro Golf Tour, the equivalent of Class AA baseball. He shot a 73 on Saturday and missed the 54-hole cut at the Travelers.
Reed can relate. His roller-coaster year began with victory at a charity pro-am in Trinidad and Tobago on Jan. 3. When he got home, he asked Karain to marry him.
“I came home from work and he just popped the question,” Karain recalled.
Reed liked his chances. After all, it was a Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment