Patrick Reed Credits Excellent Play By Getting Contacts
Masters champ Patrick Reed blamed issues with his lie and lofts on his irons last year. And now, Reed says he couldn’t see where his ball was going until he got his eyes checked. Come to find that he needed contact lenses to fix his long distance focus.
ESPN’s Bob Harig has the details.
Reed’s Masters victory came into focus for him more than a week earlier when he had his eyes checked and learned he needed contact lenses to see long distances.
Reed, who won his first major title at Augusta National last month by a shot over Rickie Fowler, was prescribed the lenses by an optometrist just 10 days prior to the first round when he was at home in Houston.
Sitting in his kitchen at home, Reed realized with the help of his wife, Justine, and his in-laws, that he was not seeing as well as he should.
“We have a pretty big TV in the den and kind of flipped through the channels and I cannot read the guide,” Reed said. “I’m just moving slowly. Justine goes, ‘You can’t read that?”’
And from there it went, with Reed realizing everyone else could see fine what he could not.
“My father-in-law’s like, ‘maybe that’s the reason we haven’t been making any putts for a year,”’ Reed said.
After getting the prescription and putting the contacts in, Reed said, “All of a sudden, I’m just looking out like, ‘Wow, I can see everything,”’ he said. “Now I’m not having to ask Kessler [his caddie] where that ball goes. All the time I’m like, ‘Kes, where’d it go?’ He’s like, ‘You didn’t see that?’ Now all of a sudden I can read greens pretty well, and it worked at Augusta.”
But not before he had to figure out how to deal with contact lenses.
Here is Reed’s recent finishes. You and he can see (sorry) his results are pre-tay good.
Last 5 starts for @PReedGolf …
T2
T7
T9
1st 🏆
8th pic.twitter.com/nqBOwJV4OO— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 7, 2018
“Trying to put those things in your eye. .. it would take me 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get them in,” he said. “Getting them out’s easy. Putting them in I was struggling. Now it’s easy, but those wake up 15 minutes before you’ve got to leave that first week at Augusta? No chance. It was wake up an hour and spend 45 minutes on my eyes.”
He said the difference has not just helped on the greens but “longer distances, being able to see, judge, that kind of stuff. It’s been interesting.”