Masters near-misses bring boost and belief for Justin Rose – UK Times

Justin Rose insists the Masters does not owe him anything after a number of near-misses at Augusta National.

The Englishman lost out to Rory McIlroy in a play-off a year ago, his third second-place finish at the tournament and his second to a Ryder Cup teammate after being edged out by Sergio Garcia at an extra hole in 2017.

Rose also has four other Masters top-10s but he insists the experience has not scarred him, even if he said having a ringside seat to see McIlroy win the green jacket and complete the career grand slam was “surreal” and “a little bit deja vu”.

“I’m very aware that I’ve been close here,” he said. “I’m very aware that I’ve had tough, tough losses here.

“I also am aware that I enjoy this place so I don’t want to feel that those three second-place finishes need to create a different sort of feeling for me.

“I don’t feel like it owes me anything. I hope it only boosts my belief I can go ahead and do it. I just haven’t walked over the line. I feel like I’ve executed well enough to have done the job.”

Rose says that he had learned from his previous close calls and that going through a play-off in 2017 helped him face the same challenge again last year.

He explained: “I can’t control the outcome. Last year in the play-off I felt like I learned from 2017 and I played a much better play-off than I did previously.

“I did the right things. I executed. I did everything that I could do so I can live with that, in a way. I can be philosophical about it. It was a bit surreal. I felt a little bit of deja vu, like ‘Wow, I feel like I’ve lived this before’.

“I can see the celebrations, it all played out right in front of me, so I lived it as if I’d have won it but obviously without any of the real positive emotion that goes with that.

“It’s disappointing, of course, but there’s no kind of ‘Why?’.”

Rose, who turns 46 in July, is running out of time to continue seriously contending to add to his only major victory – the 2013 US Open – but he does not believe his age is an issue.

“I don’t think about it on a day-to-day level,” he said. “(I’m) happy that the narrative around it is more positive than negative, for the most part.

“Definitely there is some motivation there to kind of keep going, keep pushing, try to find new habits, new ways of trying to get better, realising that’s a pretty difficult ambition to get better at this stage of my career.

“But I still feel like there’s areas of my game that I can improve on significantly and easily without age being a factor to those areas of my game.”

Rose also said it was a loss to the tournament that former multiple champions Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were not present his year.

Woods is taking time out to seek treatment after his recent car crash and driving under the influence charge, while Mickelson is absent for family reasons.

“They’ve both obviously been titans of the game for the last three decades,” Rose said, “Whether they’re 1,000 in the world or 500 in the world, their stature is way more elevated than that in the game of golf and always will be.

“It’s always a loss to not have either of them in a field anywhere.”