It was one of the more exciting US Opens in recent memory, even though the last five groups were a combined 43 over par on Sunday. And while fans are often bored to tears by bogey golf, this time the event offered a full range of drama and human interest.
First there was the winner: a 32-year-old Englishman who has lived five minutes from the Orlando airport for the past 10 years and who keeps up with major league baseball more than the latest cricket scores.
Justin Rose is one of the most popular players in any PGA Tour locker room for one simple reason: He is nice to everyone, and he is nice all the time. He has an uncanny ability to recognize faces and will call you by name after meeting you once, a gift he gets a kick out of using. He is also proper but never cold, and engaging without an ounce of phoniness, the antithesis of the last Englishman to win a major, Nick Faldo, who would ignore his mother if he was in contention.
No, really, that happened. Not long after winning his last Masters in 1996, Faldo walked right past his mother at the British Open to get to the practice tee as she called his name and trotted behind him.
Rose says hello to perfect strangers and is genuinely interested in whether fans are having a good time.
He is also tough, having forged his intestinal fortitude the old fashioned way: through failure. After breaking on the scene at the 1998 British Open, finishing fourth as a 17-year-old amateur, Rose turned professional the following week and promptly missed 21 cuts in a row, going almost a full year without earning a paycheck on the course. British tabloids devoted inordinate space to the streak, often with editorial digs that would have driven most teenagers to anger, or at least caused them to hold a grudge.
Other notable young golfers have walled off the world after a couple of unkind media encounters. Rose faced his troubles head on.
A lot has been made about Rose’s father, Ken, who died of leukemia in 2002, the same year Justin won his first European Tour event. But as great as winning the US Open on Father’s Day is, and as visually moving as Rose’s tribute to Ken on the final hole was, it was the golf shots that will be remembered.
Merion’s 18th is most famous for the 1-iron that Ben Hogan hit in 1950, but that shot ended up 40 feet from the pin. Rose hit his tee shot eight paces from Hogan’s plaque, and then ripped a 4-iron that almost went in the hole.
That was what made this Open win so impressive. Yes, Phil Mickelson missed some putts down the stretch, and, yes, such others as Steve Stricker and Luke Donald let pressure and relentless conditions get the best of them down the stretch, but no one in the field played the last five holes better than Rose. When it counted most, he dug deep and hit the best shots of his life in the game’s most grueling major.
The event marked another milestone. It was the 20th consecutive major championship not won by Tiger Woods. And his 13-over-par finish in this one marked his worst score in any US Open since he turned professional.
Not only that, he once again behaved peevishly in his press conferences, refusing to say when he hurt his left elbow, which bothered him as he hacked shots out of the high Merion rough, and throwing out the worst cliché in sports: “It is what it is.”
Now that it is over and fans have had time to reflect, most have forgotten that Rose is only five years younger than Tiger. In golf, they should be considered contemporaries. But they aren’t. One is looked upon as a fresh young newcomer with promise and potential to burn, while the other is seen as a walking litany of injuries in the late afternoon of his major championship career.
It isn’t fair, especially given the year Tiger has had so far. But perception has a way of becoming reality. And the perception after this US Open is that Rose is on the rise, while Tiger saw his window of opportunity close just a little bit more.
