‘My mission is to be in next Ryder Cup team, even at 43’
Rose denies being bitter about missing out on Whistling Straits and says his focus is now firmly on Rome
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Justin Rose eagled the 18th for a 65 which propelled him to a top-six finish in the BMW PGA Championship last month, and, as the home favourite acknowledged the acclaim of Wentworth, he figured it was job done. However, he soon understood he had been labouring under a misconception.
“When I walked off that last hole, I felt good about things, but I quickly got the vibe it wasn’t so good,” Rose says of Ryder Cup participation. “There was just a weird atmosphere on that Sunday afternoon. In the players’ lounge, all the vice-captains were around Padraig [Harrington, the Europe captain] and yeah, I got a bit of a strange feeling. I was discovering I’d dug myself a hole deeper than I realised. And I’m not going to lie, I was gutted.”
Harrington told Rose, the former world No1 with a major and an Olympic gold in his garlanded locker, that he was going elsewhere with his three Ryder Cup wild cards, and by the time Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Shane Lowry were announced and social media was
picking the picks apart, Rose himself was elsewhere and keeping his own counsel. There was, he admits, at least a measure of befuddlement.
“It was interesting. Maybe I could have done more in that final run of tournaments, but it was a slightly awkward time for me as well, in terms of not playing at Crans [in the European Masters] and in Italy. I’d won the Payne Stewart award and as I didn’t feel I could turn down his family with such a big honour, I had to travel back to the States.
“It was difficult to know what to do. But the two events in which I participated in the month leading up to the picks – in the Wyndham Championship and the PGA Championship – I played well and could have won both.
“So, I don’t know. I felt like I was rounding into form and I’d done what I needed to do. Clearly, I’d loved to have played my way in automatically, but my goal leading up to it was to be playing well.
“There’s one thing being picked but the second part is you need to win points. And that’s what I was preparing myself for. We’ll never know now, but it was a hard team to make in the end. Padraig definitely had clear ideas on who he wanted and it is what it is. It is just another lesson to me that when you put yourself in other people’s hands you
‘Padraig definitely had clear ideas on who he wanted and it is what it is’
can’t control the outcome. My history with selection confirms that”
Indeed, when it comes to Rose and qualification for the Ryder Cup, nothing can ever be taken for granted. He has played in five and each time was there through his own efforts, never once being granted a wild card. In 2010, Rose missed out when world No14. In this same quintet of matches, Poulter has been awarded five captain’s picks and was unavailable due to injury in 2016.
“Yeah, so that kind of tells you what my path to Rome in two years has to be,” Rose says.
It is a curiosity, if not an anomaly, and he can surely be forgiven any confusion. Of the current players
who have appeared in four matches or more, he is behind only Poulter and Garcia in the percentage charts, and then only by the odd point. This year, a supposed car crash of a season, has featured Rose racking up four top-10s in his past 10 events, including in two majors. His demise seemed greatly exaggerated.
Inevitably, there were mutterings that Rose was fuming at Harrington, and his silence about the match on social media only reinforced that opinion.
Yet, now he finally talks, the 41-year-old discounts that notion. “It wasn’t about me, it was about the team and there was no bitterness as far as I was concerned. I mean, what would be the point in that?
“So, listen, my record in the Ryder Cup is as good as anybody’s really, breaking it down, points-wise. But this was a hell of a team the lads were up against and I’m under no illusions – if I’d made the team, winning points would certainly not have been a foregone conclusion. You can’t make that call, but you’ve got to be in it to have the opportunity to prove it.
“That’s what I need to take care of and my reaction to all this has convinced me that I still have the hunger.”
Anyone who is acquainted with the Justin Rose story, with the 21 missed cuts to herald his pro career, to “another resurrection” following a mid-term slump, will be aware he possesses the ability to extract the positives from the rubble. He is adamant what he calls “a huge personal blow” will be no different.
“This will be a good thing for me. Something like this shakes you up and tells you a story of where you’re at. No, I don’t like it, but this sport can be cruel and it’s down to me to change the tide. So, in the long haul it’s been a plus, motivation-wise.
“I was suddenly confronted with a two-week gap in schedule where I didn’t anticipate one and maybe it would have been easy to mope on the sofa. Instead, I used that fortnight to continue my improvement. I caught up with Sean [Foley, his swing coach] and ramped up the fitness. The Ryder Cup’s a very draining week, so the fact that I wasn’t there convinced me to make the most of missing out.”
Rose did tune into the action from Whistling Straits. “Of course I did, I love the first tee and the unique atmosphere. By the Sunday it was a hard watch and you can look at the young Americans and predict doom. But that doesn’t fit in with my theory of the Ryder Cup that I’ve held for a while.
“Medinah and the miracle in 2012 skews the event massively. It was really only one day out of the three that we had any joy. We were getting beaten heavily.
“But somehow we prevailed and so we could then say, ‘Well, Europe has won five of the last seven’ and talk about dominance. However, there was a home win at the start of that run and at the end and now only that outlier, that miracle, stops it from being parity in the last 15 years.
“So, no, I don’t think there’s reason to panic, even though we got trounced [19-9] this time. The homecourse advantage is a big thing. The fans as well. And the new generation is refreshing and energising, but at 43 years of age I’ll definitely still have plenty to offer in 2023. It will be a mission of mine to make Rome. It already is. Yeah, make it by right.”