Rose controls his emotions
ALL was unfolding without much drama before the Australian Masters went distinctly surreal.
Justin Rose, the South African-born Englishman, won the gold jacket, but the result was hardly cut and dried.
Rose, who started the day with a two-shot cushion over the field, was cruising through his final round with nobody mounting a challenge. After a birdie at the 6th, he went to 14-under - four shots clear of the field.
Then his world almost caved in.
Rose bunkered his tee shot at the par-five 7th and made no sort of decent contact from the sand with his second shot. His ball squirted low into the lip and shot left into bushes. Rose, 26, hung his head in disbelief.
He was forced to take a penalty drop from under the bushes and ran up a triple-bogey eight that dropped him into a tie for the lead with Greg Chalmers on 11-under.
“I hit a decent tee shot but it just kicked left and funnelled into the trap,” Rose said.
“That trap’s like a magnet.
“Then I really took a conservative club, I was just trying to hit an eight-iron out of there, take my medicine and get it back in play, but I just thinned it. Knifed it straight into the lip of the bunker and to my absolute shock saw it ricochet straight left into the tea-tree.”
Chalmers, who had been trundling along at even par for the day, then had a moment himself. Several, in fact.
Facing a birdie putt of around 15 metres on the 9th to get to 12-under, Chalmers ran the ball past the hole by a couple of metres. The return for par missed. Then so did the one-metre putt he had left himself for bogey. And he could only look on aghast as his fourth putt of about a metre imitated a horseshoe around the hole and stayed up. Five putts and a triple-bogey seven and he fell back down the leaderboard.
Aaron Pike then stirred the pot at the 14th. The amateur who led after two rounds put himself back in the frame for a fairytale win, holing out for an eagle from a greenside bunker to join Rose in the lead.
And 2004 Masters champion Richard Green moved himself into contention just by playing solid and steady golf.
Green carded all pars on the front nine and then moved up the leaderboard to 10-under with birdies at the 10th, 11th and 14th holes.
He created more chances on the run for home but could not find the one more birdie that would have posted a challenging total in the clubhouse. His 69, three-under par, was the best of any of the players who started within six shots of the lead yesterday, and he was the only one of 67 players on Huntingdale yesterday who did not card a bogey.
Green tied for second with Chalmers, who rallied for a 73.
Rose recaptured the lead with a birdie at the 14th, promptly handed it back with a bogey at the 15th, and then regained it again with a birdie from four metres at the 16th.
A solid par at the 17th, coupled with Pike dropping a shot at the same hole, gave him a two-shot cushion up the last.
He made par for a round of 73, finished at 12-under and lifted his first title since 2002.
“It certainly was a roller-coaster,” Rose said.
“In terms of the numbers it was a roller-coaster, but what I was really pleased with today was that my emotions didn’t get on the roller-coaster. I just stayed very calm.
“Even when I made triple on the 7th I just said to myself, ‘right, you’re tied for the lead, just game on, you’ve still got a great chance here’.”
The win rounds off an excellent year for Rose, who bases himself on the US Tour.
He is yet to break into the winner’s enclosure in the US, although he has had chances, as he has struggled in the heat of battle. That may now change.
“It’s great for my self-belief,” he said of the victory.
“I can’t keep knocking on the door and not quite getting over the line.
“I felt a little bit of added pressure that if I hadn’t got over the line here it would have still been a positive week but you know people are going to look at it from a slightly different standpoint and ask why aren’t you winning.
“I knew that was the case and obviously I’m delighted to have got the job done.”
