Patrick Reed‘s sandy rules violation in the Bahamas more than two months ago continues to garner attention.
And Brooks Koepka is the latest to strongly weigh in when asked if he felt Reed cheated.
“Uh, yeah. I think, yeah, yeah,” Koepka said Monday in a Sirius/XMI radio interview that covered a range of topics. “I don’t know what he was doing, building sand castles in the sand but you know where your club is.
“I mean, I took three months off and I can promise you I know if I touched sand. It’s one of those things where you know, if you look at the video obviously he grazes the sand twice and then he still chops down on it.
“I guess the Astros are going through that right now. (Owner) Jim Crane said it, when he got asked, ‘Is it cheating?’ And he said, ‘No, we just broke the rules.’ … If you play the game you understand the rules. You understand the integrity that goes on. I mean, there’s no room for it.”
Reed was given a two-stroke penalty during the third round of the Hero World Challenge when be twice took a backswing in a waste area in which sand was displaced behind his ball.
The violation was for improving his line of play.
In the aftermath, Reed faced considerable backlash. He threatened a lawsuit against Golf Channel commentator Brandel Chamblee in the wake of strong commentary from the analyst.
Reed said he agreed with the penalty after reviewing it on video but that at the time did not realize or believe he was doing anything wrong.
Koepka, who is not competing in this week’s WGC-Mexico Championship, did the interview as part of a promotional event for the PGA Championship in San Francisco.
Among other topics, Koepka said he is unsure if he will play in the Olympics.
“Right now, to be honest with you, I’m kind of 50-50. I want to do it, yes, I think it would be awesome to do. But at the same time we have majors, WGCs, the playoffs, its all kind of… I mean, these (motions to PGA Championship trophy) take it out of me, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “You come down and I need two days just to kind of mentally recharge. It’ll be interesting just the timing of it, where it is at. The (FedEx) playoffs are kind of important. I’d like $15 mil. I think that’d be nice. I’d like to be fresh for that.”