Rose rallies to stun Johnson in Shanghai
JUSTIN ROSE produced one of the greatest comebacks in World Golf Championships history yesterday to steal the HSBC Champions title from under the nose of Dustin Johnson.
Rose erased an eight-shot final-round deficit on the world No1 to deliver his first win since taking Olympic gold in Rio last year.
The Englishman produced a searing back nine of 31 in Shanghai to claim the second WGC event of his career and pocket a cheque of £1.25million.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Rose. “It’s been a long time since I’ve won, or at least it feels like that. I’ve won every year since 2010, if you include the Olympics last year. I’ve left it late this year but it feels amazing.
“My back nine was just amazing. It was one of the best back nines I’ve played in a long, long time and to do it at the right time was amazing. It definitely was the biggest comeback of my career.
“I guess everything fell into place. I needed a lot of things to go my way, including my good play, but also I needed a little bit of help from Johnson and, on a day like today, it was easy for a leader to make some mistakes.” Johnson unravelled with a 77, his highest final round as leader since he blew the 2010 US Open with an 82 at Pebble Beach.
“Whenever you beat the top players in the world it gives a tournament victory so much more meaning, and with a leaderboard like we had with Dustin, Brooks Koepka and Henrik Stenson, I take a lot of pride in winning this tournament,” said Rose, who is set to move to sixth in the world when the rankings are updated today.
Johnson, who won at this Sheshan International course in 2013, had recorded 22 birdies in the first three rounds but failed to manage a single one yesterday.
“Making the turn I’m two over, which is fine,” said Johnson. “I know I’ve got to play solid on the back nine. I didn’t make any putts. I felt like I rolled it good. Just nothing was going in
the hole.”