ST-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — Patrick Reed was Tiger Woods’s 13th Ryder Cup partner, and the 2018 United States captain, Jim Furyk, who had been one of the previous 12, felt optimistic about the pairing’s prospects for success. As Furyk explained, Reed relishes performing in front of large crowds and Woods attracts fans like lint.
But when Woods and Reed teed off in the final four-ball match of the first day of the Ryder Cup on Friday morning, against Europe’s Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari, they played in an atmosphere that felt wholly separate from the festival of golf that was off to a rollicking start elsewhere on the grounds of Le Golf National.