AUGUSTA, Ga. — For some, Justin Rose will forever be the 17-year-old kid who nearly won The Open Championship way back in 1998. Boyish then and, 27 years later, boyish even now, Rose is still knocking on the door at major championships.
He opened Thursday’s Round 1 at the Masters by going birdie-birdie-birdie, leapfrogging everyone on the leaderboard — including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. Five more birdies later, he’d carded a stellar 7-under 65 to hold a 3-stroke lead after 18 holes.
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It’s familiar ground for Rose, who has been a steady constant for two decades — always good, though never as great as maybe we expected him to be when he burst onto the scene at that ’98 Open. Probably the expectations were too high, thinking that making a run as a teenager meant he’d be winning them soon thereafter.
But, in fact, his first major win didn’t come for another 15 years, when he overtook Phil Mickelson to win the 2013 U.S. Open. That victory wasn’t so much of a breakthrough for Rose as it was relief. Unlike fellow countryman Lee Westwood, he finally got his major.
From there, year after year after year, Rose put himself in position to win another major. In 2015, he finished T2 at Augusta, sixth at The Open and fourth at the PGA Championship. Just once since has he completed a major season without at least one top-10 finish, and three more times he’s finished runner-up. That includes a playoff loss to Sergio Garcia at the 2017 Masters.
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Put yourself near the top of the leaderboard enough times and you’ll win one here and there, or so the thinking goes. That hasn’t been the case for Rose, who has now led at Augusta after Round 1 a record fifth time. But here he is, now 44, giving it another run.
After those three birdies to start his round, he carded three more at Nos. 8, 9 and 10, then two more at 15 and 16.
The only blemish on his card came at 18, where he drove it in the trees, punched out, then barely missed a 20-footer for par. Still, it was good enough to push him three shots clear of the field.
“I feel like I’ve played well enough to win this tournament,” he said after his round. “I just feel like I don’t have the jacket to prove it.”
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And that’s sort of sums up Rose’s career. He’s played well enough to win everywhere, he just hasn’t. He’s finished second at the PGA Championship once, second at Augusta and The Open twice. But while the lack of hardware can be frustrating, the close calls, he says, are actually what keeps him going.
“If you don’t quite feel like you can do it or you don’t feel like you can play at an elite level, then practice becomes hard,” he said. “They (the close calls) were big motivating weeks where I thought the hard work is still worth it, still believe I can shake it with the best.”
To get a green jacket, that’s what he’s going to have to do. Scheffler, on a two-year tear, is right behind him, along with young gun Ludvig Åberg (-4) and Corey Conners (-4), the 21st ranked player in the world. Bryson DeChambeau (-3) is in the hunt, too.
All are in the primes of their careers, while Rose is in his self-described Indian Summer.
“Golf is not going to get easier for me in the next five, 10 years, whatever it’s going to be,” he said. “So your opportunity is less going forward, so you have to make the most of it.”
