Reed makes it clear he won't give up Masters lead quietly

AUGUSTA, Ga.- Patrick Reed playing golf in calm conditions, that's sort of the yin and yang of golf. So much of Friday at the Masters was gusty, with winds shifting and dancing and generally messing with minds. But Reed played in the last group of the day. So when he added some spice - by yelling at his ball or himself, be it appropriate or not - it cut across Augusta National Golf Club. The bluster had died down a bit. Yet Reed can still huff and puff.

The Masters is only halfway over, and the wind might yet have more of a say. But after 36 holes, Reed is coloring it with his personality and his play. The 27-year-old who's never afraid to say precisely what pops in his head managed the best score of Friday's second round, a 66 that got him to 9 under par, providing a two-shot lead over Australian Marc Leishman.

Not too long ago, Reed was helping lead the local college team, Augusta State, to back-to-back NCAA championships. Even in those days, his assessment of whether he belonged at the next level - competing in and winning majors - was unwavering.

"Everyone wants to win," he said Friday evening. "And if you don't believe you can win them, you probably shouldn't be playing in them."

Reed is playing and leading, and Leishman is closely in his rearview. A win this weekend for either would provide a signature moment, a first major championship. But the pack behind them, it's dotted with accomplishments. Lurking at 4 under are golf's two heavyweight young stars, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy, who have seven majors between them. And look at the other major winners there, too: British Open champ Henrik Stenson, a stroke better at 5 under; Dustin Johnson (U.S. Open) and Justin Thomas (PGA Championship) a couple more back at 3 under.

"It's always an awesome leaderboard," Leishman said.

And Reed's name fits. For a player who has spent time ranked in the top 10 in the world and has some heady victories - 2014 at Doral, when he brassily declared himself a top-five player, 2016 at the Barclays - Reed's record in majors is spotty. He has contended just once, last year at the PGA, where he finished two shots back of winner Thomas. His Masters record, in four trips here, was, quite frankly, disappointing - two missed cuts, never a round in the 60s.

Yet in the first two rounds, it's as if he read the manual on how to work your way around this place - and executed. His opening 69 included birdies on all four par-5s. Friday, he pulled off that trick again while largely remaining patient on the other holes.

"The more you get to play out here," he said, "the more you get to find more subtleties and nuances that you need to know about."

But he is also a known commodity, a Ryder Cup hero and character. His singles match against McIlroy at the 2016 Ryder Cup was epic, with behavior anathema to what is expected on these grounds. Reed wagged his finger at McIlroy. McIlroy shushed the crowd. Reed fired them up. After all the chaos, Reed closed out McIlroy at No. 18, and the route to the American victory was mowed.

"Of course Ryder Cup, it gets you kind of high-adrenaline, craziness going on," Reed said. "It's just one of these things, to me it's still golf."

So he is comfortable being the focus of the action. Saturday will be a different stage - the final group in a major on the weekend, when he will play with Leishman, whose second-round 67 was marked by a massively hooked second shot to the par-5 15th, where he made eagle. But by Saturday evening, Reed could be ceding the stage to the weather. Rain is predicted, and it could be coupled with wind. Friday showed how finicky Augusta becomes with just one of those elements.

"There's a fine line between birdies and bogeys," said Matt Kuchar, who shared the lead for much of the morning but stumbled to a 75. "It's one of those days where I'm kind of anxious to kick my feet up in the house and watch the guys deal with it the rest of the afternoon."

Dealing with it was difficult for just about everybody, particularly those who played earlier. Spieth began his day with a two-shot lead, and by the time he finished one hole, it was gone - a lousy tee shot leading to a double bogey at the first. His second straight wayward drive led to the unforgivable - bogey at the normally tame par-5 second. When he got to the downhill par-3 sixth, the flag blew stiff, as if on the deck of a ship fighting a storm at sea, not at the bottom of a hill in a place as tranquil as this. He made another bogey at No. 7 and shot 40 on the opening nine.

So here he was, having stormed the course Thursday, wavering. Spieth is only 24. But as he pointed out after his opening 66, he has already dealt with everything Augusta National can offer - the opportunity to master it, as he did in 2015, and the danger around each corner, as he found in a final-round collapse the following year. So he had a conversation with his caddie, Michael Geller.

"I've taken a lot of punches on this golf course - and in tournaments in general," Spieth said. "I told Michael, 'Look, when this course plays tough, I'm good for a double here or some bogeys there. Let's make these the only ones.' "

From there, he was steady and reeled in a day that might have slipped away, making birdies at the two par-5s on the back to turn in a 74. "I'm still in this golf tournament," Spieth said, and he was right.

McIlroy is as well, though his 71 was a bit less eventful than Spieth's round. The two of them in contention is the kind of theater the Masters seems to provide.

"I've always felt comfortable being up around the lead," McIlroy said. "It's a place that I'm thankfully quite familiar with and know how to deal with."

Saturday, Patrick Reed will become familiar with it. Will he be comfortable?

"It's not a position I feel that's really any different," Reed said.

He is comfortable being himself. He is comfortable at center stage. He is comfortable bellowing into the breeze. "I like it when it gets challenging," he said.

Half the challenges, the first 36 holes, are behind him. Those that await over the weekend are greater, more intense. He answers questions about his ability and potential with the utmost confidence. Now, he must play with it too.