Patrick Reed, winner of the Masters at Augusta, has struggled to capture the adoration of golf fans despite claiming one of the biggest prizes the sport has to offer.

Richie McCormack was joined by Declan Lynch and Cliona Foley on the Sunday Paper Review to discuss how the brash Texan has been received by the press and the golfing world.

Speaking about the intrusive coverage into Reed’s family life, Declan Lynch believes that the sport’s ‘false sense of superiority’ dilutes the argument that Reed is a man to dislike.

“Maybe one of the reasons he attracts the hostility of the golf establishment is that some of his behaviour could be compared to that of a mere footballer,” Lynch said on Off The Ball.

“You know how they’re always saying how great golf is in comparison to these terrible sports like football, where you have people shouting and roaring.

“And Reed has this thing of pumping his fist and when he’s in the Ryder Cup he’s telling the crowd to calm down.

“And they hate that in golf because they love to cling to that completely false sense of their own superiority – in the sense that it is 100 per cent, completely wrong.

“Golf consorts to some of the worst elements in society. The PGA in America is a dismal exemplar with its links to the worst elements in society – corporate America – the most amoral.

“It would be fine if they weren’t constantly preaching about their own superior morality and their superior kinds of behaviour.

“And then they seize on this Patrick Reed, who seems to be in many ways an exemplary character, I don’t know what the problem is.

“He behaves himself quite well on the golf course. He’s a sportsman; he’s a competitive sportsman, I’m not sure what they’re looking for here.

“In any other sport, what he does is completely normal.”

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Written by James Hopper