As unkind as it is to say, holding leads hasn’t ever really been Justin Rose’s forte.
“It's hard to win out here,” the likeable Englishman admitted on Sunday, “You tee up with a three-shot lead, it's not over. And you can do a decent day's work [and] guys always come out of nowhere on Sunday.
“You think, man, what do you got to do to win?”
Rose found his answer at the Memorial, rallying from four shots back and then keeping his head with the lead while others lost theirs to win for the first time on American soil.
“I was trying not to put a huge barrier in front of me to say, ‘Winning over here is so much different than winning over in Europe,’” said the 29-year-old, who has won six times around the world. “Now with the monkey off my back, there is a difference, of course. Until you win over here, you don't feel like you've really achieved all that you want to in the game.”
Those sentiments probably won’t endear him across the Pond, but they’re true: the PGA Tour is golf’s biggest stage, and he’s the latest in a line this year — Ian Poulter, Jason Day and Tim Clark are others — who’ve overcome their stage fright and broken through.
Rose, the self-described “forgotten man of English golf,” shot a flawless 66 at Muirfield Village to edge Rickie Fowler, the 21-year-old Californian whose time is coming.
Fowler shot 73 on a difficult day at Jack’s place. His undoing came on the par-3 12th, modeled after Augusta National’s signature hole, except that Nicklaus forces players to hit six or five irons into the treacherous green, not nine irons or wedges.
“I made a bad swing,” shrugged Fowler, who found the water, resulting in a double bogey that drowned his tilt at becoming the Memorial’s youngest champion.
Golf is an odd sport in that it handsomely rewards players for not winning. Successful careers are built on checks, not necessarily trophies.
But eventually all good players want to be recognized as winners, and Rose is no exception. He just couldn’t figure out how to get it done until this week when he decided to simply stop thinking about it.
“I knew that I was in the hunt all week, but I wasn't playing golf like I was in the hunt all week,” he said. “I was just in the moment. And I thought that paid off for me today. In the past, I've certainly gotten ahead of myself.”
Rose became the tenth twenty-something to win on the PGA Tour this year — there were only seven in all of 2009 — further proof of the gathering momentum of the youth movement in golf. The sport appears headed for a generational change.
“People asked me when Tiger was winning all the time, ’Where’s his competition?’” Nicklaus said, “I told them, ‘They’re not here yet. But they’ll be coming.’”
“It’s no different to me and Arnold (Palmer). Until I came along, Arnold pretty much didn’t have anyone who was his competition, and we were ten years apart.”
Fowler sounded very much like he was up for the challenge, bullish about his future despite the setback Sunday.
“Justin put up a great round today, so got to give it up to him,” he said. “[But I] look forward to hopefully being in contention a little bit more often. Coming from Phoenix (where Fowler was runner-up) and feeling the nerves that I did there and playing this week, I felt really comfortable out there. I can just imagine the next time, being in contention, I'll feel that much more comfortable.”
Woods could only muster an even par 72 on Sunday to finish tied for 19th. He goes to Pebble Beach next week with many question marks.
Of the players who made the cut at the Memorial, Woods finished dead last in driving accuracy and 50th in greens hit in regulation. The salvation was that his putter — a key weapon at any US Open, but especially one played on poa annua greens — was back to something approaching its best.
Woods said he was heartened by the fact that he was able to “shape the ball both ways comfortably”.
Then why did he miss so many greens?
“I over-shaped a lot of shots, which is a good thing,” Woods said. “I can always tone that down.”
He admitted that he wasn’t happy with his tee shots — he hit three spectators Sunday — though it sounded as if much of that had to do with a lack of confidence.
“I was a little bit defensive,” he said, “I was hitting the ball basically too easy and just trying to put it into play instead of just going ahead and letting it go … ripping it like everybody else does.”
Woods once again reiterated that he was “retracing my steps” in tweaking his golf swing now that he’s without a coach and that getting his game back was all part of “a process.”
“I hit shots this week I hadn’t hit in a long time and got four rounds in,” he said, “I felt good to be under the gun here, to have to hit shots. And I made putts.”
When I asked him if he was over 50 percent of the way to being back, he replied, “Definitely. Absolutely.”
Your guess is as good as mine as to what that means going into the US Open, but at least Woods seemed more relaxed than he’s been of late.
Maybe he’s come to terms with the fallout from his sex scandal, which has cost him his marriage.
When he was asked whether he’d found some normalcy in his life so he could again concentrate on golf, he smirked.
“It’s progressing,” he said.
