{"id":590567,"date":"2026-04-07T04:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T04:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/590567\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T04:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T04:57:14","slug":"you-have-to-have-a-bit-of-heartache-justin-rose-on-his-bid-to-avoid-being-masters-nearly-man-justin-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/590567\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You have to have a bit of heartache\u2019: Justin Rose on his bid to avoid being Masters nearly man | Justin Rose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Squint and you will see Justin Rose\u2019s name twice on the tournament record boards at Augusta National. It\u2019s there on the big bronze winner\u2019s list at the water fountain by the entrance, beneath the entries marking Sergio Garc\u00eda\u2019s victory in 2017<\/a> and Rory McIlroy\u2019s eight years later<\/a>, both, as it says in the small print underneath, won in a playoff that Rose lost. Only one other player in Masters history lost two playoffs, and that was Ben Hogan, who had the consolation of winning it twice outright, in 1951 and 1953, in between finishing second in 1942, 1946, 1954 and 1955.<\/p>\n

Throw in Rose\u2019s second-place finish behind Jordan Spieth in 2015<\/a>, when he finished four shots back, and he has come just about as close as any man can to the greatest prize in the game. The only player who finished second more often without actually winning the thing was Tom Weiskopf, who was runner-up four times in the space of seven years. \u201cI will win this tournament one day,\u201d Weiskopf said after he missed a birdie putt on 18 to force a playoff against Jack Nicklaus in 1975. He was 33 and it turned out to be the last best chance he ever had.<\/p>\n

Rose is 45. This is his 21st Masters and of course there\u2019s no way of knowing whether he will ever get as close again as he did last year, when he watched McIlroy make a birdie putt on 18 to beat him by one in the playoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you realise you\u2019re that close, you can taste the victory,\u201d Rose says. \u201cYou know what it would feel like if it been the other way around. I could see what it felt like, I can see the celebrations, it all played out right in front of me. So I lived it as if I\u2019d have won it, but obviously without any of the real positive emotion that goes with that, but I sensed everything.\u201d It\u2019s as close as he comes to allowing himself to think about the big what-if. \u201cI did everything that I could do. So I can live with that in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rose says he has always tried to keep his thoughts on all this squared away. He says it\u2019s how he stays out of his own way. \u201cI\u2019ve realised that when the opportunity presents itself to win a major, you can\u2019t make it too important in the moment. Because you can\u2019t skip through a career without a little bit of heartache and heartbreak, no chance. If you\u2019re going to be willing to win them, you\u2019ve got to be willing to be on the wrong side of it as well. The point is you\u2019ve got to put yourself there. That\u2019s the hard part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justin Rose won praise for how he congratulated Rory McIlroy last year after losing in a playoff to his Ryder Cup teammate. Photograph: Richard Heathcote\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Rose has a habit of doing exactly that. He has held a share of the lead nine separate times, but he might still end up as one of the tournament\u2019s attendant lords, hovering on the edge of shot during someone else\u2019s moment on the 18th green. Not that he sees it that way. \u201cI think for me I\u2019m very aware that I\u2019ve been close here,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m very aware that I\u2019ve had tough, tough losses here. But I also am aware that I enjoy this place. So I don\u2019t need to create a different sort of feeling for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and do it. I feel like I\u2019ve pretty much done what it takes to win. I just haven\u2019t walked over the line. I feel like I\u2019ve executed well enough to have done the job. From that point of view, I don\u2019t feel like I have to find something in myself to do anything different. I truly believe that.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be fair, all the reflective thinking can wait till he is done playing. Right now, Rose is playing as well as ever. It was only a couple of months ago that he broke the course record at Torrey Pines, where he was the first man to win the Farmers Insurance Open wire to wire<\/a> in 71 years. \u201cI think eight players have won this tournament after finishing second the year before, which probably increases my odds if you look at the field. I can look at that and go, \u2018OK, that\u2019s good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is that coming second is a role he plays well. He seemed genuinely pleased for McIlroy last year and was especially gracious in the moments after he lost. He would be a popular winner this year. \u201cA lot of people are wishing me well or thinking it\u2019s going to be my year, just based around sentiment, you know what I mean?\u201d he says. \u201cSo I\u2019m going to have to manage that a bit this week, and what\u2019s going to be part of my week this week for sure is people remembering what happened last year. That\u2019s fine, but I\u2019ve got to be aware of that, be ready for that. I\u2019ve got to have my own narrative and not buy into everyone else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Squint and you will see Justin Rose\u2019s name twice on the tournament record boards at Augusta National. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-590567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}