10 thoughts on Patrick Reed’s angry tweet about his free Red Sox tickets

The PGA Tour’s FedExCup Playoffs are in Boston this week for the traditional Labor Day stop at what is now known as the Dell Technologies Championship. It’s a playoffs event, and whatever your think of the contrived elements of said playoffs, the field is deep and the golf should be good. But probably not as good as the pre-tournament social media entertainment.

You should know by now that Patrick Reed, reigning Masters champion, was mad about some free tickets to a Red Sox game. He took this anger public in a tweet that is a thrilling adventure of emotions. In terms of Reed highlights this year, I now slot it No. 2. The updated list:

1. Telling a Euro Tour camera man he’d lost his privileges to record him because he was jingling change in his pocket.
2. Angry tweeting about free Red Sox tickets.
3. Telling a PGA Tour rules official he was discriminating against him because he’d give Jordan Spieth a free drop in a similar situation.
4. Winning the Masters.

So with that in mind, here’s the tweet.

It’s just 228 characters, but this is absolutely loaded with Reed Experience goodies. It’s a work of art and let’s get to some of its finer elements.

1. The surprise is not that Patrick Reed’s social media accounts posted this kind of eccentric umbrage at some slight, perceived or real. The surprise, given the presumed custodians of these accounts are Patrick Reed and his wife Justine, is that it took this long for something like this to happen and become a story. Reed is no longer repped by CAA, going with the boutique and upstart firm of Team Reed Enterprises at some point over the last year. Here’s hoping this tweet signals a change in some sort of social media strat and that these accounts start freewheeling a bit more. It will be tremendous content.

2. Nobody in golf does the acerbic “thank you” better than Patrick Reed. No one uses a phrase typically associated with gratitude to convey contempt better than Reed. It comes dripping with derision and perhaps best represents the Reed experience.

3. I love that he @’d the PGATour twice in the same tweet. Even with the bump to 280 characters, you still have a limited window to punch out that anger. But he wanted to double up on that heat and send it HQ’s way twice. It’s like sending an email, text, and leaving a voicemail when you’re running particularly hot about something and need to get answers from a co-worker or friend/partner/family member. It’s fantastic!

4. Can we talk about how incompatible the attached photo is with the text? I’m pissed off, let me take this anger public with a few words. Oh, and then we’ll throw a selfie on the end of it with everyone grinning ear-to-ear and looking happy. Why the selfie? Why was this included?

5. A baseball game seems like the appropriate venue for a blade collar.

6. The mythical “line drive section.” I think this is the subsection that has, correctly, provoked the most confusion and amusement. I don’t need to add much more to it.

7. The hashtag at the end is out-of-place and confusing, too. I’m mad. I spent a lot of money. Hashtag front row. Is he now in the front row and he’s happy about it so he’s providing that fact in hashtag form on the end of the tweet? Or is he mad that’s where the rest of the PGA Tour is sitting? A search of that hashtag yields mostly folks tweeting happily about their night out at the theater. I like to think there was some happy theatergoer out there looking to bond with another happy theatergoer, so they hit this tag and are then met by Reed. The hashtag doesn’t make a lot of sense but it adds to the richness of this experience.

8. An entertaining and high-quality portfolio of responses came out of this but pro golfer Colt Knost made the most significant contribution. It’s not even close.

9. My working theory is that the Reeds saw other Tour players, who, ahem, haven’t won the damn Masters this year, down on the field yukking it up and having a grand time. The Reeds probably had great seats in the “line drive section.” According to #sources, the PGA Tour had tickets all over the park and the Reeds’ tickets were behind the dugout, providing a great vantage point to watch a baseball game. But the tickets were separate — maybe not worse, maybe not better, just separate — from a class or a group of players or people they feel they belong to. It’s not totally wrong and I could see how it might be annoying to many other non-Reed humans out there. So they “upgraded” by dropping $650 to move into that section where other players and Tour folks presumably got in for free. Again, this is just my working theory.

Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images

10. In the end, I think this becoming a story will just make Reed burn a little hotter going into the finish of the season and the Ryder Cup, where he’ll want to prove he’s the most critical USA player. He always wants to prove he belongs in, or above, the class of young stars in the game. He belongs there, too, even if he may have a lower profile. He has a more accomplished career than colleagues who have more commercials selling rocket mortgages and insurance and luxury cars. The anger may be misguided, but if it’s more intense and now extra-motivating these next few weeks and yields another point or two in Paris, then it will all be for the better. Someone tell the Tour to put him in the bleachers next week for a Phillies game.