2019 U.S. Open: Justin Rose reveals the surprising reason he doesn’t watch golf on TV

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Justin Rose is one of the more thoughtful players in pro golf. He thinks about all kinds of stuff — he’s a classic pro — and he also happens to be leading the U.S. Open right now. 

After his one-under 70 at Pebble Beach Friday, Rose opened up about a few things. Among them were the fact that he isn’t hitting the ball as well as he could, and that he draws confidence from that entering the weekend.

“I still wasn’t a hundred percent dialed into my long game,” Rose said. “So sometimes it’s nice to be in contention with things to work on going into the weekend. Sometimes if you feel perfect after two days it’s sometimes hard to keep that level every single day.”

But what followed may have been the most fascinating of all. Asked if he would watch some of the broadcast ahead of his own round tomorrow, Rose responded:

“I’ll leave that to my caddie, to be honest, to do all the watching. I find that’s not conducive — when I watch golf, I never want to miss a putt, I never want to hit it in the rough. So when they make putts I get frustrated. So it doesn’t do me any good really to watch it. But I think the strategy that you can learn can sometimes be important. But the one or two nuggets I might get from watching it I don’t think will help me. I’ll leave that to him.”

You could find Rose’s insights both hilarious and fascinating, but it just speaks to how remarkably competitive these guys are. Rose is so geared-up that he doesn’t even want to watch guys who are out there playing before him make putts because it makes him frustrated. These guys are just a different breed, and you certainly can’t argue with Rose’s results so far this week.