Postgame Press: Villainy on the green

The antagonist. Every great story has one. Sometimes (most of the time) we hate them (despise them). Sometimes, we cheer for them. This is true in movies, books and sports. The recent Masters tournament saw a former hero try to regain his status, as well as the birth of a new villain.

Tiger Woods came out and did not play well. There is little sugar-coating to be done after he raised people’s expectations with recent tournament play. He simply failed to live up to expectations. The hero-turned-villain hoped to return to his former stature of an absolute icon, and he did not do so. His story was not the most interesting or villainized of the Masters, though.

Patrick Reed won his first Masters, and thus his first green jacket at Augusta, with a score of 15-under on the course last weekend. While Reed's win came down to the wire (he beat Rickie Fowler with a putt that, if missed, could have sent the tournament to a playoff), the climax and finale did not go the way many people hoped. Reed, despite playing well for most of the event, ended up being the underdog in most people’s eyes, simply because the villain usually does not win. And boy, he was a villain.

Reed was kicked off of his college golf team, is estranged from his family due to an absolute shunning of his family after they told him he was too young to marry and he has a cocky demeanor.People dislike him for his untraditional golf build and his wife’s confronting his estranged family members. A lot of people cheered against Reed for myriad reasons. I am not going to argue whether he should have been villainized. I just want to know, does his villain position make his win all the more fun? I think it does.

The villain role added another layer to an already amazing event. Sure, the Masters would have been fun just to watch Tiger and see if he could get back to the elite level he was once at. Once it was clear he could not, there might have been no other storyline to love (or love to hate) as much. The leaderboard was familiar, with no real dark horses over-performing. There were, as always, great shots, but nothing absurdly spectacular except for a late, silly hole-in-one. The most interesting storyline was rooting against the villain, Patrick Reed. It would have been fun to see him fall, but I enjoyed his win.

I thought it was great to see a different face on top at Augusta, and I thought the media response was much more fun and fascinating because Reed won. He was not the hero people wanted, but he was the villain we got. I cannot begin to describe how much fun people will have watching him get dethroned next year.