Justin Rose points to the sky after sinking his final putt at the U.S. Open
Three nights and a two days have passed since Justin Rose hit a perfect drive and an equally ideal 4-iron to the final green at the Merion Golf Club to finish at one-over-par 281 in the U.S. Open. Phil Mickelson needed to birdie the hole to tie Rose. Mickelson was unable to do that, and Rose had his first major championship. He had won the U.S. Open, the championship that rewards accuracy and what the Canadian golfer and two-time PGA Tour winner Richard Zokol calls "cold-blooded golf." His swing coach and friend Sean Foley told me in an e-mail Monday that he's "really pumped for Rosey."
I loved watching every minute of the U.S. Open, and it was wonderful to see Rose win. He's 32 now, 15 years removed from when he holed a shot from 50 yards on the last hole of the 1998 Open Championship at the Royal Birkdale Golf Club. I was there, and I've never heard a louder roar than the one that the spectators emitted when the ball fell. It was as if they had discovered, or uncovered, a golfing hero for the present and future. He was one of their own, an Englishman.
Rose, then 17, turned pro soon after. He missed 21 straight cuts to start his professional career. There was no end of discussion about whether he had turned pro too early. Should he have continued to compete at the highest levels in amateur golf? Was he mature enough to be a tour pro so soon? Or maybe he would learn what it would take to compete as a professional while he suffered the indignities the game so often fires one's way?
Would he be shredded, or would he be made solid and tough in the crucible of playing golf for his living? Having announced himself at Birkdale, he would not have been surprised at the attention paid how he was faring. He stayed the course. He played on. He missed those 21 straight cuts. His father Ken was at his side offering advice and wise counsel. Four years later, in 2002, his dad died. Rose thought of him often. It was touching when he gazed to the skies after he tapped in for par on the final hole at Merion. He was acknowledging his father, of course, and the role he played in his life on and off the course. He was thanking him.
It was a long and arduous road for Rose that brought him to Merion believing, really believing, he and the life he had chosen as a teenager had forged within him the ingredients required to prevail. The shots he hit on the last hole were Hoganesque. They were the mark of a golfer who could stay in the moment and cast aside all thoughts of "what if?"
I've written about Rose frequently over the years, and admired his determination and the way he handles himself. I spent a day with Rose and his wife Kate a few years ago at their home in Lake Nona, Florida for an article I was writing. Long before that, in May 1999, I wrote a piece for the Globe about Rose. This was 10 months after Birkdale, 10 months after he turned pro. He was working with David Leadbetter then. Leadbetter thought Rose had made the right decision in turning pro so young. Two-time British Amateur champion Peter McEvoy, a man about golf in British circles, and a very thoughtful one, thought Rose was too young to have turned pro.
I've learned over my 35 years of writing golf that predictions are pointless. Golf gives players time. Rose at 32 has won his first major. Adam Scott at 32 won his first major, the Masters last April. Mike Weir, at 43, is showing strong signs of a comeback. He tied for 28th in the U.S. Open. He again knows where the ball is going, and he's never been anything other than a golfer who accepts a challenge. Many people have written him off. Why can't we simply let things play out?
I'm appending below the article I wrote that was published in the May 9, 1999 Globe. I wrote that the road ahead for Rose was "full of potholes, full of questions." Fifteen years later, a grown man, a husband, a father of two children, he has answered some questions. His quest continues. The quest is to be the best he can be, no matter how many years it takes.
We should salute Rose and honour the path he has taken, full of potholes as it was.
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May 8/99, The Globe and Mail
It's always interesting, and sometimes enjoyable, to come upon a young golfer who has enormous potential, and then to follow his or her progress–if indeed it's progress that the player makes. Following Justin Rose, then, has been interesting, but not always enjoyable. The 18-year old English golfer missed his 18th consecutive cut yesterday as a professional, this after tying for fourth place as an amateur last July in the British Open at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England.
Rose, who was 17 when he electrified the crowds at Birkdale, turned pro the next week. He got through pre-qualifying for the PGA European Tour, but then didn't make it past the final qualifying school in November. Still, his pre-qualifying success made him a European Tour member, and allowed him to accept as many sponsors' exemptions as were offered.
They have been offered all right. But Rose has missed the cut in every tournament he has entered since turning pro. Rose again missed the cut yesterday at the Novotel Perrier Open de France in Bordeaux after shooting 71-75.
The last eight months have been quite the learning experience for Rose. Perhaps his best opportunity for making the cut came at the Portuguese Open in the Algarve in March. Rose bogeyed the last two holes to miss by a shot.
" My concentration levels are not what they should be," Rose said then. "I never thought that the mental side of my game was lacking, but I've got to admit now it's the part I have to work on most."
It's no surprise that Rose's concentration has been suffering. He's been under a powerful spotlight since he came up with one of the most dramatic shots in British Open history to finish fourth. That was on the last hole, when Rose holed a 40-yard shot from the left rough for a birdie. It was an amazing way for Rose to end an amazing championship.
Nobody who was there will forget the roar that resounded all over the links as Rose's ball rolled toward the hole and then dropped. The only comparable sound I have heard was when Jack Nicklaus hit his tee shot on the par-3 16th the last day of the 1986 Masters. The ball nearly went in the hole, and Nicklaus went on to win that Masters.
Rose was still stunned at what he had done when he spoke after his last shot at Birkdale. The world's press listened to a 17-year old who had become golf's newest hero.
" It was one of those incredible moments," Rose said. "The ball got nearer and nearer and finally disappeared. I couldn't believe it."
Accolades came Rose's way from everywhere. The headlines in the British papers tell a tale of how a country's golf fans can nearly weep with excitement at having a young player show signs of greatness.
" Rose illuminates the way forward," one headline said. "A young amateur has lifted the nation's spirits," another emoted. "Week that changed my life," Rose himself wrote in an Open diary he kept for The Daily Telegraph."
The experts weighed in with their pronouncements. Two-time British Amateur champion Peter McEvoy had captained teams that included Rose.
" He'll be the one," McEvoy predicted. "This is the coming of the golfing Messiah, the next (Nick) Faldo."
Rose turned professional right away, and played the Dutch Open the week following Birkdale. The British press followed him there, as it has every week since. But Rose missed the cut and hasn't made one since.
The young golfer, of course, cannot know why he has missed cuts. Nobody can. There are only theories. Did he turn pro too quickly? Even Tiger Woods waited until he was 20 and had won three straight U.S. Amateurs to turn pro. And Rose, gifted as he was, had not accomplished anything near what Woods had done in amateur golf.
Then again, Woods had never finished fourth in a major championship. He had not grown up in a country starving for a new young golfing hero; there were plenty already, although Woods was certainly the biggest thing to hit U.S. golf since Jack Nicklaus during the late fifties and early sixties.
Rose had done something stupendous at Birkdale, and it is true that his performance did cap a superb amateur career. It wasn't Woodsian in scope of achievement, but it was still first-rate. Rose had won the Peter McEvoy Trophy, one of the top amateur events in the U.K. He'd won the St. Andrews Links Trophy, a 72-hole international amateur event that golfers in the U.K. value highly.
What was left for the young man in amateur golf–at least British amateur golf? Commercial interests swarmed round Rose, whose father Ken took on the role as his primary advisor. Notwithstanding his missed cuts, Rose garnered a deal to play the Maxfli Revolution ball worth a reported $1-million (U.S.) for three years. Performance-related bonuses were included in the contract.
But Rose–still a teenager–has yet to produce those performances. The headlines have gone from "The Rose is blooming," to "Bloom is off the Rose," and "Wilting Rose."
McEvoy, as high as he won on the youngster he pronounced the new "golfing Messiah," had also issued a warning.
" In my opinion Justin is too young to turn professional," McEvoy said. "It is nothing to do with golf. He is too young to be a doctor, an architect, a policeman. You should turn pro when you have achieved everything as an amateur."
McEvoy added that the only thing that could hurt Rose and stop him from reaching his potential is "if he gets the stuffing knocked out of him in the next couple of years. In 15 years' time he'll be 32 and all he'll have done is play golf, and that might not be enough for an intelligent person such as Justin."
It's too early to suggest that the stuffing has been knocked out of somebody who remains an appealing and hugely talented young golfer–emphasis on "young." Rose has been working with David Leadbetter and recently spent a couple of weeks with him at the Lake Nona club in Orlando.
" Let's not forget that Justin is only 18," Leadbetter said yesterday. "That's not old enough to lose confidence. Yes, he's missing cuts, but he's still excited about playing and he's learning on the job. He's also still growing. In the last year he has probably grown nine inches to a foot."
Leadbetter added that Rose did have some flaws in his swing, and that he feels the youngster is actually a better player technically now than at the British Open. He also feels he's better off as a pro than had he stayed an amateur.
" There's no better learning field than out there," Leadbetter said. "I've just told him to put this down to pure experience, and to put every shot in the memory bank. I think that two years down the road he'll be well ahead of a player who comes out of college and turns pro. He'll be hardened."
At the same time, Leadbetter knows there is far more to succeeding in pro golf than having a sound game. Rose has been swept up in a vortex of activity and attention that surely he cannot have anticipated. His parents provided him excellent counsel during his amateur career but perhaps even they have been overtaken by the wild ride their son has been taking, not to mention the hits he's taken on the course.
Some people are now calling for Rose's father to leave his side. He accompanies his son at every tournament. That way lies trouble, according to 1981 Canadian Open champion Peter Oosterhuis. Oosterhuis, 51, knows the terrain upon which Rose is walking, for he was once proclaimed Britain's "next golfing Messiah."
There was good reason for these expectations. Oosterhuis had played on the British Walker Cup team in 1967. He did win 19 international tournaments, and finished second in the 1974 and 1982 British Opens. But he would be the first to admit that he never reached the heights expected of him.
Oosterhuis has been working this week on the telecast of the French Open. He watched Rose's still fluidly elegant swing and made what could be construed as a harsh observation.
" At some point Justin has got to make his own way on the tour," Oosterhuis said. "He would have a better chance of mixing and mingling with the other pros if his father weren't with him."
Leadbetter disagrees. "His father's not overly pushy, not at all," he said. "A lot of fathers do need to stay out of the way, but Justin and his father have a very good relationship. I've told his father that I can't be out there all the time, and I've advised him of the swing keys I'd like Justin to work on so that he can monitor them. I believe they are good friends in addition to being father and son, and that it's good for Justin to have his dad out there."
Meanwhile, Rose continues his efforts to make his way forward. Is he providing evidence that one needs to be a fully-grown human being–an adult–before becoming a professional athlete? Did he peak too early? Did he move too quickly? Is his father's presence helping or hurting? Is he thinking too much about the golf swing rather than letting his natural abilities come out, as they did so beautifully at Royal Birkdale?
One thing is certain, and this is that we will see more and more teenagers turning pro. Spain's Sergio Garcia, the 1998 British Amateur champion, turned pro April 16th. He had just a few days before become the first European to finish as low amateur at the Masters. South African sensation Trevor Immelman, who made the cut in the Masters and finished last, will no doubt also turn pro sooner rather than later.
" We want Sergio to stay just the way he is," his manager and longtime friend Jose Marquina said when Garcia turned pro. "Off the course, a nice teenager; on the golf course, a 30-year old."
Garcia has already made his first cut as a professional, in the Spanish Open last month. He will be playing some events on the PGA Tour this spring and summer, the recipient of sponsors' exemptions. Garcia is a fabulous golfer, but he, like Rose, is on a new road now.
And that road is not always a charmed road. It's full of potholes, full of questions. Rose knows all the questions. He's still waiting to come up with the right answers. As the British say, it's still early days; far too early to decide that Rose made the wrong decision in turning pro.
RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at lornerubenstein@me.com. You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein