The ice cream stands around Royal Troon were quiet that day. The rain clouds closed in just as the leaders arrived on the practice green, spreading miserable weather across the course like puddles that no one had time to wipe away. The kind of weather that would have you coming back inside as soon as you opened your front door, and an hour later the crowds thinned out as people headed home early. Even the dry humor of the locals was soaked. The Open is glamorous, but you need a good reason to go outside when you can watch it on TV.
Justin Rose had his chance. Starting the round at five under par and two strokes behind overnight leader Shane Lowry, Rose was one of the few players in the field who felt he had a good chance of being named Golfer of the Year. Rose had been waiting for this opportunity since he placed fourth at Royal Birkdale as a 17-year-old amateur in 1998, and he ignited it throughout the four-and-a-half-hour round. And at the end of the round, that chance was still alive.
He shot a 73 that included three bogeys, triple the score he had made through his first 36 holes here, but it was a magnificent display of calm, controlled golf given the conditions and the carnage unfolding around him.
Rose knows all too well how precious this opportunity is. He’s 43 now, and as he himself said earlier this week, “the clock is ticking.” Rose didn’t even realize the time was ticking, but when he sat down with his team in May to plan the season, he was in a rush. The conversation has been the same for the past 20 years. “And then there’s the Masters, the Open, the U.S. Open, the PGA, how do you plan around that,” Rose explained. But this year, for the first time since 2007, he found himself not actually eligible for the Open.
Rose qualified for last year’s championship because he was in the top 50 in the world rankings, but he’d fallen to 56th when the cutoff came around again in May. There are plenty of other ways to qualify, except he’s not in the top 30 in either the FedEx Cup or DP World Tour standings, he didn’t finish in the top 10 at last year’s British Open, he hasn’t won another major in the past five years, and, even more unlucky, the R&A had just done away with a rule that allowed anyone who’d played in a Ryder Cup to qualify. As Rose looked over the list, it finally dawned on him that there was only one way left.
So with a U.S. Open title, Olympic gold medal and $60 million in prize money under his belt, Rose found himself playing in the final round of U.S. Open qualifying at Burnham & Bellew on the Somerset coast on the first Tuesday in July, which underscores just how much the U.S. Open still means to him. “It’s a special tournament, one I’ve dreamed of winning since I was a kid,” he explained. “Obviously, to win it you have to play.” And if the only way is to win a 36-hole tournament on the Bristol Channel coast at Burnham-on-Sea, so be it.
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Rose had played at Burnham as a teenager on the amateur circuit, winning the Caris Trophy for boys under 18 in 1995. And now, almost 30 years later, he was at Burnham again, competing with 71 other players for the final spot in the British Open, sharing the course’s portable toilets with a handful of spectators who had dropped in to watch. He reportedly spent a long evening in the clubhouse afterwards signing autographs and talking to members.
The experience re-affirmed him to links golf, but perhaps more importantly, it meant he could no longer take the opportunity to play on the course for granted, as he had done before. And watching him toil around the links in horrible weather, hat worn backwards to keep the water dripping from the brim off his face, grimacing as he aimed for lag putts and worked out how to get out of the rough, you could almost see him having a genuine fun. He was the only one having fun in Troon, along with the men selling umbrellas.
