Prior to the start of the Dubai Desert Classic, Patrick Reed and Rory McIlroy were involved in a slightly tense exchange, (opens in new tab) which resulted in Reed reportedly tossing a tee in McIlroy’s direction.
Despite the drama, both find themselves near the top of the leaderboard, or in Rory’s case, at the top of the leaderboard. However, it was Reed who was involved in a bizarre and controversial incident at the driveable par 4 17th, when his ball found one of the many palm trees surrounding the green.
Reed sits in a tie for fourth and four shots behind the leader, McIlroy
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Going for the green, the American’s drive flew towards the target before seemingly making an impact with a trio of palm trees. Arriving at the scene, Reed was then reportedly told by marshals which tree he had gone into, with the LIV (opens in new tab) golfer forced to use a pair of binoculars to find and identify his golf ball.
Unsighted from off the tee, Reed wouldn’t have known which tree the ball struck and, after a conversation with the Rules Official on site, Reed stated that he could “definitely see the markings on my ball”, with the American taking a penalty drop and card a bogey. (opens in new tab)
However, on Sky Sports after the third round’s play had ended, it appeared that, on the video, his tee shot actually found the first tree and not the one that was further up. Therefore, it was unlikely to be the tee shot that Reed confirmed was in the tree.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Nick Dougherty and Laura Davies spoke about the incident, with Dougherty stating: “What Patrick said himself is that he couldn’t actually see those trees and you can’t from that tee box, but when you look at this footage there is a slight concern that the tree that the ball entered was not the one from where he took the drop.”
Patrick Reed identifies his ball in left of the 3 trees yet the tv camera clearly shows it going in the right hand tree?? Am I missing something pic.twitter.com/tOr3yTza14January 29, 2023
Adding on to Dougherty’s comments, Davies stated “it looked to be a perfect drive and an inch either side he is probably on the front of the green, but we said at the time we don’t know where that has gone and the reason being it went into that first tree and that’s the key.”
Following the footage, which shows Reed identifying and taking a drop, Davies explains that: “There’s a lot of golf balls in that tree and a lot of people use the same brand that Patrick uses and you couldn’t 100% tell whether he said a number, but he has found his manufacturer’s ball… Patrick Reed has been very unlucky here. He’s found a ball that he plays, the number he plays with obviously a similar black line, as it appears with the evidence first thing.
“He’s been incredibly unfortunate and he’s been told the wrong tree to look in, for a kickoff. Kevin (Rules Official) has done everything right and Patrick has done everything he can do in that he’s identified what he thought was his ball, but it looks like it wasn’t his ball with the video evidence.”
What was Reed’s reaction to all of this? Well, after his round when asked if he thought it was his ball, he responded by saying “100 percent,” before adding “I would have gone back to the tee if I wasn’t 100 percent… I got lucky that we were able to look through the binoculars and you have to make sure it’s your ball and how I mark my golf balls is I always put an arrow on the end of my line because, on the Pro V1 the arrow on the end stops before it, so you can see the arrow.
“And you could definitely see and identify the line with the arrow on the end, and the rules official, luckily, was there to reconfirm and check it to make sure it was mine as well.”