TROON, Scotland — A younger Justin Rose would have acted differently, but this Justin Rose knows too much. He’s 43 years old and 44 at the end of the month. He travels with a recovery trailer all for himself, just to try to keep up with the millennial golfers, not to mention the Gen-Zs. He had just fist-pumped and fist-punched and turned his cap around in the rain for four days at Royal Troon, all to be showered with a bunch of money, a bunch of ranking points and a bunch of applause after a 15-foot birdie rolled in at the last.
“At that point, you’re being a professional,” he said Sunday night. “Then I walk 10 steps later, and I’m choking back tears. So that’s the shift.”
It was a “magic moment” in his words, that militaristic salute to the arena of spectators engulfing the Open Championship’s final hole. He ripped his hat off so quickly you’d think he was the champ and not the runner-up, two shots back. Rose wore a claret-colored jumper, the same get-up as the Sunday back in 1998, when he was just a 17-year-old amateur, holing out from the rough to tie for fourth.
“I also won the FedExCup in this color, too,” he said. “It was kind of a thought, Let’s go back to the well. Third time lucky.”
Aged as these old bears get, they remember the tiniest stuff best.
We won’t have any problem remembering how Rose whipped Royal Troon into a frenzy. The reasons are aplenty. He’s a Brit, and this is — to a lot of people — the British Open. He was the most energetic player in contention — long before that finishing putt — and it may not have been close. Those steely stares as rain smacked his face, his clothes and his clubs. But the simplest reason is often the best: He’s older than most. There’s no better way to put it. We didn’t expect it because we don’t expect much when the lads turn 40.
As the sport continues its collective hunt for power, speed, flexibility and launch, its winners get younger and younger. Youths have been in contention all summer on the PGA Tour, gobbling up spots inside the cutline. A decreasing age-floor, for these reasons, shrinks the age-ceiling on golf stardom, too. That’s why Colin Montgomerie suggests Tiger Woods retire. That’s why people call for the Champions Tour to disband. If it isn’t golf at its absolute peak, most fans don’t want anything to do with it. But weeks like this one are why Montgomerie is wrong. It’s why the Champions Tour serves as a sharpening rod for 50-somethings with game. An epic week in pro golf is not seven days long. Only four. You can manifest something special for four days. Rose has been at it for awhile.
For starters, he brought back his old caddie, 59-year-old Mark Fulcher. Or rather, Mrs. Rose brought back Mark Fulcher. The two men worked together for more than a decade, but parted ways in 2019. And not in the cleanest of ways. This time a year ago, they were “too proud” to call each other up to kick-start something fresh.
“It was Mrs. Rose calling Mrs. Fulcher,” Mark said Sunday. “And saying, ‘Did I fancy doing the Ryder Cup?’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ May as well, eh?”
May as well. You may recall the early fruits of their reunion: Rose holing a putt to clinch a half-point as the first night of the Ryder Cup came to a close, keeping the Americans from winning a single match on Day 1.
There is that recovery trailer, too. At least that’s what his team calls it. This thing is more of a recovery RV than something you’d tow behind a Jeep. It sports cold plunges, hot plunges, an infrared sauna and a steam room. The espresso machine is a nice touch. But it travels well so Rose can travel well.
“Chronologically, yeah, he might be in his 40s,” started his swing coach Mark Blackburn, “but I think biologically, the way he looks after himself, he’s probably in his 30s. So don’t look at it that way.”
Will not!
Rose is hardly the only 40-something doing this lately. Sergio Garcia, 44, won last week on the LIV Golf tour, against a smaller but robust field. He nearly qualified his way into the Open, just as Rose did. Adam Scott should have won last week, across the country in East Lothian, at the Scottish Open. If Bob MacIntyre doesn’t drag his metal spikes across an oddly placed sprinkler head in the rough at Renaissance Club, Scott is your outright champion a week ago. Scotty started this year in Dubai telling Golf Magazine all about an “adapt-or-die” mentality he took to competing in his older age. Are we to be surprised that two former no. 1s, and one former no. 2 — each with one major, double-digit PGA Tour wins, double-digit DP World Tour wins — are all soon to be 44 and still … doing it?
“I think there’s pride amongst the three of us to keep going,” Scott said Sunday night. He just finished T10, earning auto-qualification into next-year’s Open.
“Just how the time of our career — we weren’t good enough in Tiger’s peak, but then we kind of got our shot 10 years later, and always being nearly a great-of-the-game is spurring us on, I think, to keep going for a few more years.”
It was Scott’s first time really acknowledging one of those truths that arrive late in careers: The later it gets, the fewer opportunities there are, and the stratification of your wins and near-wins cement themselves in stone. Rose didn’t just talk about it when he crept up leaderboards this week. He was talking about it two months ago.
“That’s what’s motivating me to stick with it and keep working hard,” Rose said at the PGA Championship in May, won coincidentally by that same guy, Xander Schauffele, “is to try to give myself like the Indian summer of my career. Try to still steal one or two of these to really make it a fantastic career.”
In the middle of a Scottish summer, he damn near did it.
