‘You have to have a bit of heartache’: Justin Rose on his bid to avoid being Masters nearly man
Squint and you will see Justin Rose’s name twice on the tournament record boards at Augusta National.It’s there on the big bronze winner’s list at the water fountain by the entrance, beneath the entries marking Sergio García’s victory in 2017 and Rory McIlroy’s eight years later, 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.Throw in Rose’s second-place finish behind Jordan Spieth in 2015, 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.
“I will win this tournament one day,” 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.Rose is 45.This is his 21st Masters and of course there’s 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.“When you realise you’re that close, you can taste the victory,” Rose says.
“You 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’d have won it, but obviously without any of the real positive emotion that goes with that, but I sensed everything.” It’s as close as he comes to allowing himself to think about the big what-if.“I did everything that I could do.
So I can live with that in a way,”Rose says he has always tried to keep his thoughts on all this squared away,He says it’s how he stays out of his own way,“I’ve realised that when the opportunity presents itself to win a major, you can’t make it too important in the moment,Because you can’t skip through a career without a little bit of heartache and heartbreak, no chance.
If you’re going to be willing to win them, you’ve got to be willing to be on the wrong side of it as well.The point is you’ve got to put yourself there.That’s the hard part.”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’s attendant lords, hovering on the edge of shot during someone else’s moment on the 18th green.
Not that he sees it that way.“I think for me I’m very aware that I’ve been close here,” he says.“I’m very aware that I’ve had tough, tough losses here.But I also am aware that I enjoy this place.So I don’t need to create a different sort of feeling for me.
“I hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and do it.I feel like I’ve pretty much done what it takes to win.I just haven’t walked over the line.I feel like I’ve executed well enough to have done the job.From that point of view, I don’t feel like I have to find something in myself to do anything different.
I truly believe that.”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 in 71 years.“I 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, ‘OK, that’s good.’”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.“A lot of people are wishing me well or thinking it’s going to be my year, just based around sentiment, you know what I mean?” he says.
“So I’m going to have to manage that a bit this week, and what’s going to be part of my week this week for sure is people remembering what happened last year.That’s fine, but I’ve got to be aware of that, be ready for that.I’ve got to have my own narrative and not buy into everyone else’s.”
Oil rises above $110 as Trump deadline looms for Iran to reopen strait – business live
In other news, the American billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at more than €50bn (£44bn).Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has offered to buy the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, in a cash and stock deal.Ackman said in a statement that while the company, which is led by the British-born Sir Lucian Grainge, had done “an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance”, its share price had lagged owing to issues “unrelated to the performance of its music business”.Shares in UMG, which have been listed in Amsterdam since 2021, have lost more than a quarter of their value in the past year alone.The company is one of the “big three” record labels, alongside Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group
Universal Music receives takeover offer from Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square
Billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at more than €50bn (£44bn).Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has offered to buy the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, in a cash and stock deal.Ackman said in a statement that while the company, which is led by the British-born Sir Lucian Grainge, had done “an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance”, its share price had lagged owing to issues “unrelated to the performance of its music business”.Shares in UMG, which have been listed in Amsterdam since 2021, have lost more than a quarter of their value in the past year alone.The company is one of the “big three” record labels, alongside Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group
An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night
Two weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in Manchester. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.In early February, a class of new, powerful AI assistants went viral. The assistants, called OpenClaw, represented a step change in the rapidly improving capabilities of AI – in large part because, unlike other AI agents, they could be untethered from guardrails and set loose upon the world
Kurt Strauss obituary
My father, Kurt Strauss, who has died aged 95, was a senior engineer who worked for more than two decades at the Electricity Council, the government body that coordinated electricity supply in England and Wales before privatisation in 1990.He worked for all of that time within the council’s overseas relations branch, managing international relationships, technical exchanges and consultancy services while rising steadily through the ranks to associate director. German by birth but brought up in the UK, he was a passionate European who spoke French and German, and was therefore well suited to those responsibilities.Kurt was born in Degerloch, a suburb of Stuttgart, into a Jewish family. In 1937 his parents, Viktor, who worked in the family down and feather business, and Marianne (nee Melzer), sent Kurt’s older brother, Helmut, to safety in Britain, where he ended up at a boarding school, Sidcot, in Somerset
The Masters is a welcome oasis in golf’s fractious world, despite its stuffy foibles | Ewan Murray
It is easy to poke fun at the prissy traditions of the Masters. Golfers, never mind spectators, enter a state of panic over what horrible fate may befall them should they break the rules inside Augusta National. It is preposterous in so many ways; adults consumed by fear over missteps at a golf tournament. People do not typically feel this way inside the Sistine Chapel.This year, there are reasons to be grateful for Augusta’s unapologetic approach
Michigan defeats UConn to win NCAA men’s basketball championship – as it happened
I’m waiting for a Final Four MVP (or MOP, as they call it – Most Outstanding Player) announcement. And here it is …It’s Elliot Cadeau. Well deserved.On that note, we’ll wrap this college basketball season. Back again in November
Court dismisses former WhatsApp security chief’s lawsuit against Meta
Goodbye mrbrightside416: Google allows users to alter quirky Gmail addresses
Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests
Claude’s code: Anthropic leaks source code for AI software engineering tool
SpaceX confidentially files to go public at $1.75tn, reports say
‘System malfunction’ causes robotaxis to stall in the middle of the road in China