It was a slow day at the ice cream stalls around Royal Troon. Just as the leaders reached the practice green, the rain clouds stopped and pain spread across the course like puddles that no one had gotten around to mopping up. It’s the kind of weather that makes you turn right around as soon as you open the front door, and an hour later the crowds start to thin out and people go home early. Even the locals’ dry humor got wet. As tempting as the Open is, you need a really good reason to want to quit when you can watch the Open on TV.
Justin Rose has one. Rose, who started the round at 5 under, two shots behind Shane Lowry’s lead, was one of the few golfers on the course who thought he had a chance to become the golf champion of the year. one of the hands. He had been waiting for this opportunity since finishing fourth at Royal Birkdale as a 17-year-old amateur in 1998, and he lit it up during the four-and-a-half-hour race. By the time he finished speaking, it was still alive.
He shot 73 and had three bogeys, three times as many as he had in the first 36 holes here. But given the conditions, and given the carnage happening around him, it was a fine display of calm, controlled golf.
Rose knew how precious this opportunity was. He is now 43 and, as he said himself earlier this week, “the clock is ticking.” Rose didn’t even notice it happening in the past, but when he sat down with his team in May to plan the season’s schedule, he got into a rush. These conversations have been the same for the past 20 years. “Okay, Masters, Open, U.S. Open, PGA,” Rose explained, “how do we plan that?” But this year he realized that, for the first time since 2007, he didn’t actually have an Open title. qualifications.
Rose qualified for the championship last year because he entered the top 50 in the world rankings, but when the deadline came again in May, he had fallen to 56th. There are many other ways to earn a spot. It’s just that he’s not in the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings, or in the top 30 in the DP World Tour standings, wasn’t in the top 10 at last year’s Open, and hasn’t won any other majors in the last five tournaments. tournament for a few years, and to make matters worse, the R&A have just scrapped a rule that gave an exemption to anyone who competed in the Ryder Cup. As Ross looked over the list, he finally realized he only had one path left.
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This is Rose, a man who has won the U.S. Open, an Olympic gold medal and $60 million in prize money, on the first Tuesday of 2017 at Burnham & Berrow on the Somerset Coast ’s final Open qualifying match. That speaks volumes about how much the Open means to him, even now. “It’s a special event, one that I’ve dreamed of winning since I was a kid,” he explains. “Obviously you have to be in it to win.” If the only way is on the shores of the Bristol Channel in Burnham-super-Sea While playing in a 36-hole tournament, so be it.
Rose played on the amateur circuit in Burnham as a teenager. There he won the Carris Trophy for boys under 18 in 1995. Sharing the course’s portable toilets and a few punters hanging out to watch. He then reportedly stayed in the clubhouse for a long night, signing autographs and talking to members.
He said the experience re-introduced him to links golf and, perhaps more importantly, meant he couldn’t take the opportunity to play as a matter of course as before. Watching him slog his way around the links in the worst of the weather, wearing his hat backwards to keep the water from the brim from dripping on his face, you might even believe he really enjoyed being out there, lined up Holding his lagging putt, he grimaced as he tried to figure out how to get out of the jam. He is the only umbrella seller in Troon town.
