Rose targets fast start to Euro Tour in Hong Kong
hong kong — Golf’s world number six Justin Rose said ice baths and a team of fitness experts helped him keep up his energy last season, as he eyes a fast start to the new European Tour in Hong Kong.
Rose takes his place among Europe’s top golfers at the Hong Kong Open Thursday just days after the 2017 circuit finished.
His unflagging energy saw him win tournaments in China and Turkey in the space of a month before narrowly missing out at the seasonal finale in Dubai last weekend. “Today is my off-season!” joked a blearyeyed Justin Rose on Tuesday, hours after flying in from the Middle East. “I take the day off today and then we get going again tomorrow. “I’ll definitely do (ice baths), a lot of contrast — hot-cold stuff. I’ll do that preround, post-round sometimes.
“I track my heart rate variability every day to get a bit of a snapshot of how my body is coping with time changes, and jet lag. If I need to focus on recovery I will. If I need to focus on fitness I will.”
It is a punishing schedule for today’s golfers, who jet back and forth across time zones for tournaments while keeping their bodies in a peak athletic condition that has become essential in the modern game. And as events such as the Asian Tour’s historic Hong Kong Open are added to the European Tour’s winter schedule as jointly sanctioned competitions, the season’s start has shifted earlier and earlier.
The Englishman’s next stop is the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas next Thursday, a tournament run by the Tiger Woods Foundation which is expected to see the hotly-anticipated return of its namesake golfing superstar. “The sooner you can win in a tour season the better,” Rose told AFP.
Other European stars have taken a marginally more restful approach. —