Patrick Reed’s Ryder Cup wrath hit multiple targets. Here’s a breakdown of how and why.

The United States does not do drama-free Ryder Cup losses. The Euros? They get drunk and laugh at themselves. Team USA has to point fingers, bristle, make biting remarks, and sometimes drive a bus through an entire captaincy and PGA of America to force a complete overhaul of the operation.

So it came as a mild surprise that the U.S. group maneuvered through their team press conference without incident Sunday afternoon in Paris. It was quiet, morose, and at times awkward, but it was without any major incident. Then came the last question, directed at Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed.

“You guys had quite a bit of success in the past playing together. Just curious if either of you were surprised that you didn’t play together this week, and did that topic ever come up?”

The question hung in the air as Spieth, on the far left of the dais, and Reed, in the very last seat on the far right, stared at each other deciding who should take the ball and run with it. The first line of the official transcript is a non-verbal entry that may tell you more than any of the actual spoken words that followed.

PATRICK REED: (Looking at Jordan; Jordan looking back at Patrick, both smiling).

Spieth jumped in, provided a very inoffensive and forgettable answer. Then captain Jim Furyk, sitting in the middle of the dais, interceded to clarify that it was totally his decision and filibuster us to the end.

Reed did not get to speak and the press conference concluded. The night, however, was still young and there was plenty of time for insolence in other forums.

Late Sunday night, Karen Crouse of The New York Times published an article with quotes from Reed, who made himself available for comment over the phone after the press conference. In the article, Reed questions Spieth and Furyk about the breakup of the previously successful Reed-Spieth Ryder Cup pairing, and even catches Tiger Woods with some shrapnel. Let’s go one-by-one through the comments and their targets in the article.

Spieth is the focus of Reed’s scorned-lover wrath. Spieth and Reed were a fantastic Ryder Cup team. They were 4-1-2 in the two previous Ryder Cups, where they were hailed as a potential modern day Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal, the Spanish duo recognized as the greatest Ryder Cup pairing ever.

But they came together in that first Ryder Cup not out of some strong desire to play together, but mostly time and circumstance. Both were rookies ahead of their age-group peers and did not have established partners yet, and there was a concern that there may be trouble finding a good suitor for the precocious Reed. Spieth raised his hand and and said he wanted to play with Reed and the two became the bright spot in another embarrassing failure for the USA.

The partnership, however, was not borne out of some longstanding friendship, desire to play together, or a common ground, as was the case with Seve and Ollie. They were just the rookies at that time and place.

These were the nascent days of what were presumably decades-long careers for both on these American teams. Spieth, perhaps, did not want to be boxed in to a Reed partnership for life. He stepped out on Reed and dabbled with Dustin Johnson at the 2015 Presidents Cup. At last year’s Presidents Cup, the two were back together and played all four sessions. The DJ experiment had been the only time Spieth played with someone other than Reed in four years of team competitions together.

Until this week, when Spieth teamed up with Justin Thomas, who is, unlike Reed, one of his closest golf friends from their junior days to now. It was Thomas’ first Ryder Cup and the two were a natural pair based on that history. They went 3-1 and were one of the rare bright spots in another spectacular failure.

Reed was not. He played poorly and only played two of the first four sessions. If Spieth and Reed did not have that successful early history, no one would question putting Spieth and Thomas together. They’re extremely close, both great players, and it worked. But Spieth and Reed do have that preexisting relationship.

And then Reed played poorly and the U.S. team got blown out. So Reed had some thoughts to get off about the breakup:

“The issue’s obviously with Jordan not wanting to play with me,” Reed said, adding, “I don’t have any issue with Jordan. When it comes right down to it, I don’t care if I like the person I’m paired with or if the person likes me as long as it works and it sets up the team for success.”

Reed may not have any issue with Jordan, but Jordan may have an issue with Reed (may — we do not know this for sure, yet). This year, during a dispute with a PGA Tour rules official, Reed cracked, “I guess my name needs to be Jordan Spieth” in order to get the more generous ruling he wanted. A few weeks later, before the two played against each other in the WGC Match Play, Reed was asked what made Spieth so good in match play. His non-sequitur response was, “I don’t know, my back still hurts from the last Ryder Cup.” It was a joke, half, sorta, maybe, you can never tell with Reed, who is a world-class talent at putting a tinge of contempt on an attempt at humor.

So Spieth may have had an issue with some of the things Reed said about him this year, and in turn with Reed himself. Then, this weekend, a Twitter account bearing Reed’s wife’s name started tweeting about the matter of the breakup, and included a reference about someone not being able to take a joke.

When asked to confirm if the account was hers on Sunday in Paris, Justine responded, “I can’t really say, I don’t know” before shutting down the questioning from Dylan Dethier of Golf.com.

Patrick’s comments to Crouse on the breakup hit on the same themes as the tweets. In addition to saying, the “issue’s obviously with Jordan,” the temperamental Reed also expressed resentment about some sort of power-grab by a preferred class on the U.S. roster.

Reed described the decision-making process as “a buddy system” that ignores the input of all but a few select players.

You can hazard a guess about who some of those few select players are on the American team.

This is all, of course, exactly the opposite of how Spieth deals with things and would want it. He does not like drama in the press and while he often provides candid and valuable answers on the record, he steers clear of public trouble with colleagues. Spieth should perhaps be grateful it came out in an article, given this line to Crouse about Reed restraining himself from in-person confrontation at the team press conference.

“I was looking at him like I was about to light the room up like Phil in ’14.”

Reed though could not help himself after a blowout loss in which he played poorly and he needed to let it be known the split was not mutual nor desired and that Jordan ran out on him.

Whispering ... he’s not completely out of line for asking why you would split up such a successful duo and he’s not wrong for being upset that it happened. Now, he played so poorly this week that the Spieth-Reed pairing could have crashed back to earth in a violent ball of flames on the course, too. Also, the Spieth-Thomas pairing was a smashing success and may be the start of the true Seve-Olazabal redux. Also, Reed did not need to publicly lash out about the split, but I am sure happy he did!

In addition to calling out Spieth in the NYT article, Reed also drove a bus over Furyk’s captaincy. There’s the reference above about Furyk’s capitulation to some sort of “buddy system.” He made it clear to Crouse that he lobbied Furyk to keep playing with Spieth, his “first choice.” He expected it and was blindsided when he found out Spieth was playing with Thomas. His critique of the breakup is also an indictment, in his head, of a mealy-mouthed captaincy that didn’t stand up to Spieth and keep the duo together.

There’s also, uh, a much more direct questioning of Furyk’s decisions.

“For somebody as successful in the Ryder Cup as I am, I don’t think it’s smart to sit me twice,” Reed said.

Yikes! Did he just say Furyk was not smart in his tactics? I think he did.

Even Tiger Woods does not come out of this unscathed. Reed, upset about the Spieth breakup, stated that Tiger was his second choice. Sincere apologies due to him because he had to settle for the greatest player of all time as a partner.

Reed and Tiger were bad. Both of them stunk in the two-man games. Reed was particularly awful and appeared on track to post a number in the 80s on Saturday morning had they been keeping score. There were several balls in the water and one tee shot hammered out of bounds into the line-drive section of nearby chalets.

Reed was arguably the worst American player not named Phil Mickelson in the first two days of matches. Howeva ... he made sure to let Crouse know Tiger had apologized to him for letting him down in their underwhelming performance as a pair.

Reed and Woods lost their first match against Fleetwood and Molinari, after which, Reed said, Woods apologized for letting him down. He said he told him, “We win together as a team and we lose together as a team.”

Props to Reed, who again was not good himself, for taking the high road with an acceptance of Tiger’s apology via hackneyed sports cliche.

Reed’s play was so bad it warranted a benching on this loaded U.S. roster that was falling behind in a Ryder Cup they were favored to win. Furyk could not run him out there again, especially after Saturday morning’s match. As noted above, Reed disagreed, saying, “For somebody as successful in the Ryder Cup as I am, I don’t think it’s smart to sit me twice.”

This is Reed’s runaway self-confidence, a huge asset to his game and past Ryder Cup teams, becoming totally detached from reality. Reed has been a Ryder Cup hero. He’s been excellent for the U.S. in two prior Cups and earned the rep as one of the team’s most reliable point-earners. But that’s not enough history to make him a must-play when it appears his game is rubbish. He’s not Sergio Garcia or Ian Poulter with decades of Ryder Cup history behind him. And even so, had Poulter and Sergio played like Reed did, they would have probably understood and accepted a benching.

Crouse deftly weaves Reed’s quotes into a larger portrait of the differences in camaraderie between the U.S. team and European team. It ends with this self-own that has you suffocating on hypocrisy.

Reed thought of all the inspirational sayings he had read in the team room. “Every day, I saw ‘Leave your egos at the door,’” Reed said. Referring to the Europeans, he added, “They do that better than us.”

Indeed.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds and it’s hard to envision the Spieth-Reed duo getting back together anytime soon, at either a Presidents Cup or a Ryder Cup, especially with Thomas likely to be on all these rosters for the next decade too. It’s likely Reed still has a lengthy Ryder Cup career ahead of him and the persistent fire under his ass will be burning more intensely at the next one, where maybe he’ll hit fewer balls in the water to keep that flame alive.

But now that he’s popped off at Spieth, his captain, and incidentally buried Tiger, who exactly will want to play with him in 2020 in Wisconsin? Is he ever going to be a Captain’s pick after this? If he qualifies automatically, which is likely given his talent, where do you put him?

This outburst may mean nothing on the course two, four, and six years from now. This week was a disaster but his Ryder Cup history is still a positive one. The public flaming of his teammates and captain, however, will be at the forefront of his next teammates’ and captain’s minds, not that positive history.