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It's not the first time players on the PGA Tour have expressed their dislike of 2018 Masters winner Patrick Reed.
- Brooks Koepka called out Patrick Reed for cheating at the Hero World Challenge in December during an interview with Sirius XM.
- Reed was given a two-stroke penalty after improving his lie in a bunker.
- "If you play the game, you understand the rules," Koepka said. "You understand the integrity that goes on. I mean, there's no room for it."
- Koepka wasn't the only one who called out Reed for bending the rules in his favor, as former CBS Sports reporter Peter Kostis said that he'd seen Reed improve his lie "up close and personal four times," while appearing as a guest on the podcast "No Laying Up."
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Golfer Patrick Reed is once again receiving scrutiny for his behavior on the course.
The criticism began with a shot fired from Brooks Koepka, who played as Reed's teammate at the Ryder Cup.
"I mean, I don't know what he was doing, building sandcastles in the sand, but you know where your club is," Koepka told Sirius XM's Sway Callaway. "It's one of those things where you know if you look at the video obviously, he grazes the sand twice and then he still chops down on it."
Koepka was referring to an incident that took place in December at the Hero World Challenge when Reed could be seen improving his lie while lining up a shot out of the bunker.
Reed was ultimately given a two-stroke penalty for his infraction.
Koepka wasn't the only one sounding off against Reed. Former CBS Sports reporter Peter Kostis added fuel to the fire on Wednesday while appearing as a guest on the podcast, "No Laying Up."
"I was told by Frank Chirkinian, the godfather of golf on TV, that we are there to report the story, not be a part of the story," Kostis said. "We could never call a penalty on a player, but we could comment if a penalty was called on a player."
After a beat, he continued. "I've seen Patrick Reed improve his lie up close and personal four times now. You can go on YouTube. It's the only time I ever shut [announcer Gary] McCord up - he didn't know what to say when I said 'the lie I saw originally wouldn't have allowed for this shot.'"
"He put four, five clubs behind the ball, kind of faking whether he's gonna hit this shot, hit that shot, by the time he was done, he hit a freakin' three wood out of there," Kostis told the podcast. "It was a sand wedge layup originally."
This was at the 2016 Barclays at Bethpage Black, a tournament that Reed would go on to win by one stroke over Sean O'Hair and Emiliano Grillo.
Kostis said it wasn't the only time he'd seen Reed play with different clubs before eventually being left with a better lie.
"I was in the tower at No. 16 at [the Farmers Insurance Open in] San Diego on the par 3 during a Golf Channel telecast and he hit it over the green and did the same thing," Kostis said. "Put three or four clubs behind it, and it was really a treacherous shot and nobody had gotten it close all day long from over there. By the time he was done, I could read 'Callaway' on the golf ball from my tower."
"There was another incident in Hartford and another incident in San Diego, but we can't be the story."
Kostis added that he didn't know the intent behind the infractions he'd seen Reed make on the course.
"I'm not even sure that he knows he's doing it sometimes," Kostis said. "Maybe he does, I don't know, I'm not going to assign intent. All I'm going to tell you is what I saw."
Kostis was asked if the type of lie-fixing he had seen Reed take part in was rampant across the PGA Tour. "No," Kostis said.
With two prominent voices now speaking out against Reed, he'll likely face even more scrutiny as the 2020 season heads towards the first of the four majors this April.
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