It is not just the azaleas that will be puffed up and bright at Augusta this week. There is also a Rose that is feeling rather good about life.
That Justin Rose will be in Georgia at all is down to a few key events in the past couple of years or so, bookmarked firstly by his decision to snub LIV in 2021 and then the vindication a couple of months ago when he won his first PGA Tour title in four years.
The latter is what earned him his place in this field, but it would not have been possible had he succumbed to the strong temptations of an offer to join Greg Norman’s merry band, believed to be worth north of £40million. That would have meant joining the ranks of the ostracised, and as a golfer who was already falling fast through the rankings, how would he have found a way back to the majors?
But that was then. He rejected LIV, he won the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach in February, and the changes he made in between mean that he has arrived at the Masters ranked No 31 in the world.
It still feels on the low side just four years after he was No 1, seven on from his Olympic gold medal and a decade removed from winning the US Open. And yet it is necessary to remember Rose fell as low as 84 earlier this year, which would have kept him from competing here.
Justin Rose won on the PGA Tour for the first time in four years in February and is raring to go
The Englishman has returned after ‘lost’ years and is ready for an assault on a Green Jacket
Rose is currently ranked No 31 in the world and will be looking to assert his quality at Augusta
‘There have been times when I was a bit lost,’ he told Sportsmail. ‘To win again after all that time was really, really special. It has been so important for me, because this is a hard game. A fickle game.
‘I’ve said before, you can fall into a trap of being No 1 and not correctly re-setting your goals and before long it gets difficult, which it did for me.
‘Your situation can change quickly. Once you make a few bad decisions you need to make five or six good decisions to get back. It is hard to build momentum with a few different things in order to get results. It took a bit of a reinvention and what I can say is I am very happy to be where I am.’
That is to say he is back at Augusta, where he has six top-10 finishes in 15 starts, including a play-off defeat to Sergio Garcia in 2017. It is the sort of stage he thought of when he rejected LIV, swayed by memories of being a young kid who used to fantasise about major-winning putts on the practice greens at North Hants.
Now that he is 42, risking his place at further majors was ultimately ‘not an option’, but it was one thing to keep the door open to the big four but quite another to walk through it.
Rose points to two months last autumn as the key time in starting the turnaround, thereby leading him to this week. Among the changes was to hire a new coach in Mark Blackburn.
‘I took a break around October and I am very glad I did it,’ Rose says. ‘I wasn’t injured, but I took a lot of time off, worked hard in the gym and didn’t play much golf. I kind of reset the body a little bit. I also made a coaching change and I was able to really let things percolate.
‘I think when you’re a little bit lost, and you’re not really sure what’s working, it’s hard to be motivated, right? It’s hard to practise something that you do not really have a lot of trust in. That is a hard thing for a sportsman. I think once you then gain a bit of trust back in the process and your plan, then you have that motivation to work hard again. I have that. I really believe that time off helped.’
The upshot has been his win at Pebble Beach — his 11th on the PGA Tour, a record for an Englishman — as well as qualification for the Masters and a sixth-placed finish at the Players Championship, golf’s unofficial fifth major. For the first time in a while, Rose has a spring in his step going back to Augusta and renewed hopes of making a sixth Ryder Cup team later this year.
He credits a break last autumn with allowing him to rediscover his motivation for the game
Rose has previously come agonisingly close to claiming a Masters victory – including 2017’s play-off defeat to Sergio Garcia
‘Sometimes things are not so far off but on the scorecard it can be huge, so getting the results I did in the past few weeks or months is massive. I had that at Pebble and it felt great.
‘The field there wasn’t super strong. But I felt like I showed at the Players Championship Sawgrass that I played good enough golf to contend in the strongest field in golf, so from that point of view, I took away a huge amount.
‘I think everything from my point of view is in place now for Augusta. It’s a place I am normally inspired to just be at, and I know how to play the golf course.
‘I’ve competed there without doing great and I led there in 2021 when I was playing terrible golf, really, so in terms of my confidence I’m better now than it was then. I am not saying it’s all going to click, but it’s the kind of place where I just feel like I need to be pretty decent and I think I can be.’