AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Justin Rose, the player who missed the cut 21 straight times to start his professional career, has a knack for seeing the glass half-full.
Rose is 45 — only four players older than him have won major championships — and yet he prefers to refer to his “Indian summer” of playing great golf at this stage in his career. Evidence can be found three months ago when he beat a strong field at Torrey Pines.
He became a footnote in Masters
history last year when Rory McIlroy beat him in a playoff, making Rose the only player to have twice lost in a playoff at Augusta National without ever having won the Masters green jacket.
The consolation — fine print, at that — is getting his name etched three times on the Masters trophy because the club lists the runner-up each year. The playoff loss to McIlroy. A more crushing playoff loss to Sergio Garcia in 2017. A runner-up by four shots to Jordan Spieth in 2015.
All that means to Rose is he knows his way around Augusta National, and that's the inspiration he brings to the Masters this year.
“I'm very aware that I've been close here,” Rose said Monday afternoon. “I'm very aware that I've had tough, tough losses here. I also am aware that I enjoy this place. I don't want to feel that those three second-place finishes need to create a different sort of feeling for me.”
The record for winning the silver salver awarded to the runner-up without ever having Tuesday night plans at the Masters Club dinner is held by the late Tom Weiskopf, four times a bridesmaid.
Weiskopf was haunted by coming close without ever winning the Masters, as were so many others over the years. Greg Norman had Larry Mize hole a miracle chip in a playoff in 1987 and blew a six-shot lead to Nick Faldo in 1996. David Duval, who had three chances in a four-year stretch. It's a long, sad list.
There is desire and obsession when it comes to the green jacket.
“I’d say firmly in the desire camp, just because I know that the latter is not going to help me,” Rose said. “It’s probably professional discipline just to keep it in the desire realm. I think I probably wouldn’t let myself go down the other path. Like I said, that probably won’t be fruitful. Professionally, I’m not going to do that.”
Rose had a two-shot lead with six holes to play and Sergio Garcia in the azaleas left of the 13th hole, but the Spaniard caught him and beat him in a playoff. Last year, Rose holed a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th and needed McIlroy to make bogey from the fairway on the 18th to get in a playoff.
Both times he lost to friends. That doesn't make it easier.
“The key is showing up. The key is to try to be as free as you can in those moments,” Rose said. “Yeah, you have to hope a little bit along the way that it’s your day. It could have been my day in a couple of major championships. Hopefully with that mindset, keep chipping away, my day might still happen where a little bit of something goes my way.”
And now he returns to Augusta National, which holds so much familiarity as the only major held on the same course every year. That's what can make it so difficult to win after coming so close. There's a lot of scar tissue built up over the years.
Rose is leaning on that half-full glass.
“I hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and do it,” he said. "I feel like I’ve pretty much done what it takes to win. I just haven’t walked over the line. I feel like I’ve executed well enough to have done the job. From that point of view, I don’t feel like I have to find something in myself to do something different. I truly believe that.
“No, I don’t feel like it owes me anything. I come here with a good attitude. It’s a place that I enjoy being. There’s certain places you get to and you take a deep breath and go, ‘Right, it’s nice to be here.’ Augusta still is one of those places for me.”
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