TROON, SCOTLAND | Justin Rose felt gutted when he walked off the 18th green on Sunday at Royal Troon. His closing 67 and his loss to Xander Schauffele in the 152nd Open Championship had hit him hard.
“I played the way I wanted, and I felt so strong out there,” he told his audience.
What would have made the experience still harder to bear was that while he was being interviewed, Martin Slumbers, the R&A’s outgoing chief executive, was walking past with the Claret Jug and was about to start the prize-giving.
Rose and Schauffele had played together in the third-to-last group, and all along, in what had been a great display by both, Rose had marvelled at the 30-year-old American’s horsepower.
The 43-year-old Rose, an Englishman who shared second place with American Billy Horschel at 7-under 277, two strokes behind Schauffele, no longer has that same degree of strength; it has faded with the passage of time. However, as he told GGP at the previous week’s Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club, he is in the gym every day with a view to keeping up with the younger fry for as long as possible.
“I need to earn the right to play well, and that means doing all the boring things, like lifting dead weights.” That said, he had paused for a moment before changing his mind. “Actually, it’s more nerve-racking than boring, because you’re walking a tightrope between pushing yourself to the right degree and not overdoing things to the point where you’re going to pick up an injury.”
In spite of the time he spent on the practice ground at the Renaissance, Rose missed the cut as he concentrated on getting his backswing on the right slot. “He’s nearly there,” said Mark Fulcher, his loyal caddie, at Troon last Monday. “And when I say nearly, it could be as close as tomorrow.”
As it turned out, the missed cut had nothing to destroy the confidence he had picked up when he played his way through the Open's final qualifier at Burnham & Berrow, the southwest England course where, as a 14-year-old, he had won the Carris Trophy as the English Boys Under 18 champion. He described it as the best pre-Open experience possible.
“What it did,” he said, “was to give me a new sense of gratitude and appreciation about being lucky enough to play in the Open.”
Others might have wondered why he so fancied his chances at Troon, but from the word go his touch was often in the same compelling mode as it had been when, in capturing the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, he had pointed skyward by way of showing that he had won for his much-loved father, Ken, who had died from cancer in 2002. More than anything, it told us of a level of belief in the player that is given to the very few.
His loyalty to caddie provides another example. When Fulcher was recovering from heart surgery in 2019 and Rose had employed another caddie in the interim, he went out and won the Farmers Insurance Open with “Fooch,” as he calls him, in mind. “This one was for you,” he said.
Though the recovery process started slowly, the caddie returned to Rose’s side in time for the 2023 Ryder Cup in Italy after following his surgeon’s advice to prepare by walking around the block carrying an empty golf bag and adding a single club on a daily basis.
There was no plan as to how Rose would dress for the final round at Troon, but there were a couple of Lancashire journalists who spotted how he was sporting the same colours he had worn when, as a 17-year-old amateur, he had finished in a share of fourth place in the 1998 Open at Royal Birkdale. Even then he was doing the supersonic, holing from 50 yards short of the green for his closing birdie. “I didn’t set out to wear the same," he said, "but, when I realised that the only top I had left was maroon, I rather liked the idea.”
“It reinforced my feeling that I can do it.”
Justin Rose
In going through his closing 4-under round, which he will no doubt be doing for days to come, Rose listed the things where he had been as good as he could be. His emotions had brought out the best in him. He had rammed home one putt after another, and he was “super proud” of the extent to which he had no regrets. After he holed a crafty 8-footer for par at the 11th, things slowed, as he had four putts in a row stop tantalisingly on the lip.
The walk up the 18th, where he signed off with a birdie, provided a moment which told him that there would be a next time, one in which he would be the player making off with the Claret Jug.
“It reinforced my feeling that I can do it,” said Rose, whose most recent of 11 PGA Tour victories came in early 2023 at Pebble Beach.
When Rose added that he thought Shauffele was underestimated, he was not too far out.
On Saturday night, when the R&A media staff had asked a gathering of writers if they wanted to speak to the American — he was only a couple of shots behind Horschel — only two or three put up their hands.
The spectators, meanwhile, were falling for him in a big way.
Lewine Mair
