Patrick Reed wins the 2018 Masters

Are you a polarizing, idiosyncratic Ryder Cup star with out a major championship? Cool. Get in line, you’ll be next to be fitted for a Green Jacket.

Just a three years removed from deeming himself a “top five player in the world,” Patrick Reed has his major championship. The 28-year-old American best known for his Ryder Cup heroics and antics at Hazeltine two years ago held off hard charges from Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth with a steely, workmanlike close to take the title. But what an afternoon it was at Augusta, where golf delivered an insane, cathartic Sunday that lived up to every billing it could — even with Tiger Woods finishing early and Rory McIlroy fading out of contention. A two putt on the 18th clinched the victory, the final of four steady pars as Fowler and Spieth were closing in down the stretch.

This birdie at the 14th ended up as the winner, just enough for a one-shot edge over Fowler.

But as Reed was steady down the stretch, things were wild on the rest of the golf course. Fowler’s back-nine 32 pushed him into contention late, with a birdie at the final hole applying just enough pressure to make things dramatic on the final hole for Reed. But for much of the day, oddly enough, the story of the day was, somehow, once again, Jordan Spieth. And the story of this Masters might some how be, once again, how he lost it. Spieth’s 64 just nearly, almost went down in history — and if it weren’t for one tree limb, it probably would have been the best round in the history of the sport. Ever.

Not probably. It would have been. Consider. Spieth started the day nine shots off the lead. Heck, yesterday at one point he was double-digit shots off the lead on the weekend! That margin wasn’t made up via a leader’s complete collapse, either. He did it by almost tying the damn course record, by putting up a sixty-freaking-four in the final round of The Masters. He did it by navigating upstream into a leaderboard stocked of superstars in the sport. This moment on the 16th was ready to go down in Masters history alongside Tiger’s 2005 chip-in, part thanks to Spieth, part thanks to Uncle Verne.

Like, look at this. 24 hours before walking to the 18th with the lead, Ken Pomeroy’s win-chance calculator gave him a 0.4% chance of victory. Zero. Point. Four. It’s absurd that there was ever a chance of this happening. Snowball in hell, et cetera, et cetera.

Then comes the shot we’ll probably all remember, because sport is stupid and unjust. Jordan Spieth, coming to the 72nd hole at The Masters with the course record in tow, and doing something a 40-handicapper does at the local muni. A slight pull off the tee clips an overhanging limb, and the ball drops well short of the front edge of the fairway. Playing the 18th at Augusta on Sunday is a ghoulish purgatory for both one’s mental state and golf game in any circumstance. Playing your second from 315 yards out, well out of range of any sort of measured yardage, while one stroke off the lead? That’s a next-level, indescribable kind of haunting.Jordan Spieth, who is perhaps a cat with nine lives, should have been dead then and there. Again.

Two unlikely, excellent shots from there left Spieth with eight or so feet to save a miraculous par, post at 14-under, and stay within one of Patrick Reed a few holes behind. But just as the short ones at 7 and 13 earlier slid over the lip, Spieth’s biggest early season thorn-in-the-side poked out once again: short-to-midrange putting. The roll slipped over the left edge, and gave Reed room to breathe over the final three holes -- en route to his first ever major championship title.

Despite all that, history will probably end up remembering this as a weekend coronation for Reed — and like him or not, it’s hard to deny that the guy’s good for the sport. Like him or hate him, every sport needs heroes and villains and America’s most dominant Ryder Cupper of late won’t have the knock that he’s a non-factor in major championships any longer. He was steady and steely throughout where plenty of would-be first-timers have wilted. Hell, in the hyped-up rematch of the 2016 Ryder Cup battle between Reed and Rory McIlroy, it was the four-time major winning McIlroy who wilted — ejecting from the tv coverage fairly early on Sunday afternoon and not meriting a mention in this wrap-up until 800-some words in. What such a concerning means for golf’s most fun-to-watch player that isn’t Tiger Woods will be another topic for another time.

But for now, it’s all about Patrick Reed, Masters Champion. The route might have been circuitous, and bumpy, and awkward at times — but there’s no doubt the sport has another 20-something star that can draw interest and a crowd for the sport on a week to week basis.