Justin’s TIME

Spieth and McIlroy may have created a stunning new rivalry, but don’t forget England’s No1 – Justin Rose on how he can crack The Open, beating Faldo’s record... and the secret behind his new teeth!

THE poolside setting of a £15,000-a-night villa in the swanky boutique resort of Costa Smeralda in Sardinia was, all things considered, not a bad location to have a long conversation with England’s leading golfer, Justin Rose.

In the distance, the rich and famous are relaxing on expensive toys in the tranquil waters of the Mediterranean. The pampered and the bronzed are leaving the beach as the sun prepares to settle.

Nearby, Rose’s wife Kate is getting a chance to practise her fluent Italian while their young children Leo and Charlotte are thrilled at the opportunity to feast on pizza and gelato.

Rose is in good form. He has already got the maddening frustrations of Chambers Bay and the US Open out of his system. He talks revealingly about everything from the two men at the summit of the game who have left everyone else behind at base camp, to the dental work he had done recently that caused so much chatter on social media and beyond. Happily, his face has filled out from the gaunt-looking figure we saw at Augusta in April.

‘Pasta and carbs will do that for you,’ he says, smiling.

Coming up this week is the defence of the Scottish Open he won so stylishly at Royal Aberdeen last year, followed by what he considers the ultimate prize in golf: The Open at St Andrews.

Rose will be 35 later this month and you can’t help but be pleased life has worked out so well for him. During the first decade of his pro career it was touch and go as he embarked on a tempestuous rollercoaster journey, but he showed his mental strength to come through it unscathed. The last six years have been really good, marked by his first major championship win at the US Open, heroics at two Ryder Cups in 2012 and last year, regular victories on the PGA and European Tours and a clear vision of what he wants to achieve.

‘I still haven’t given up on edging past Nick Faldo to be England’s finest, but I’m aware I have to get a move on,’ he said.

There seems only one place to start. Some pros inside the world’s top 10 would balk at the idea of talking about Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth but seventh-ranked Rose has no such hang-ups. There are no chips on his broad shoulders.

Rose has played more golf this year with Spieth than any other pro and has seen what makes McIlroy tick as Ryder Cup team-mates, so there are few better qualified to give an opinion. What’s his verdict on the men who hold all four majors between them?

‘I’m fascinated like everyone else by the contrast,’ he said. ‘When Rory is on he looks unbeatable, while Jordan never looks like he’s going to make a mistake. I’ve played a lot with Jordan recently and I haven’t a bad word to say about him. All the good things you hear are true.

‘As a golfer, he’s unassuming. He sneaks up on you, by making one or two more 15-footers than you’ll make. He’s calm but got a lot of fire; doesn’t accept bad shots but doesn’t dwell on them. He’s managing to walk that fine line and that narrow focus is really paying off.

‘I played with him at the US Open and, to be honest, I didn’t think he played that well. I don’t think he thought he played that well. And yet he ended up winning. It’s staggering when you think how hard they are to win, all the great players who have never won one and yet Jordan is making us look like we should never lose one.

‘I think we all thought Rory was the only player who could have a serious tilt at Tiger’s total of 14 majors and now here’s Jordan, ahead of the game at 21. When Tiger won the Masters at that age with an 18-under-par total we all sat back and said that’s a feat we’ll never see again in our lifetime and yet he’s gone and done it. I’m interested to see what happens next. Will we see more talents like these emerge, inspired by what they have seen?’

Rose was something of a prodigy himself, of course, finishing tied fourth in The Open at the age of just 17. Who would have guessed back then, during that summer of 1998 that also gave us Michael Owen’s slalom World Cup goal for England against Argentina, that the latter would have settled happily into retirement while the former is still striving to claim his first Claret Jug? He’s not even been close, if truth be told, with a truly baffling one top-20 finish from 13 subsequent showings. Ask him for a one-word description of his Open record and no wonder he pounces on ‘underwhelming’. What’s going on? ‘I guess I got off to too good a start,’ he says with a rueful grin, referring to that lofty finish as an amateur. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot with this Open in mind and I think there are a number of factors. One is I do feel like I’ve been on the wrong side of the draw in four or five of the last six Opens, and at least a couple of them have been significant. But you have to accept links golf can be like that.

‘Another thing I have to accept is that playing so much in America over the past decade has possibly affected my links play, although I still believe I have all the shots.

‘And then there’s a third factor, and this is the first time I’ve thought about this, that I haven’t done a good enough job in dealing with the energy that comes with an Open. You’ve got this fantastic crowd if you’re playing well but you can also sense their disappointment as well, and I think I’ve fed off that the wrong way on occasions.

‘But I see no reason why I can’t now draw a line and have a good five-year period at The Open. I won the St Andrews Links Trophy as an amateur and finished runner-up in the Dunhill Links one year, so I know I can play the Old Course. I showed at Royal Aberdeen last year that I have the patience to play a quirky links and if the scoring is low, well, I won that Scottish Open shooting 69, 68, 66, and 65, so I can go low the way Faldo went low at St Andrews in 1990, with really solid golf. Like me he wasn’t known as a low-scoring player but he got it to 18 under and I can as well if the weather is kind.’

Remarkably, Rose has only played one Open at St Andrews, and that didn’t go to plan either. He arrived in 2010 as the game’s hottest player, having won twice in America in the space of a month, only to miss the cut.

In 2000, he was still trying to see his way clear from the fog of 21 missed cuts to start his professional career. In 2005 he was first reserve, and hung around all day on the practice ground but no one dropped out.

‘The same thing happened at the PGA a month later and those two things acted like a wake-up call, because they were very frustrating,’ he said. ‘Things started to pick up after that.’

These days, of course, he’s one of the leading contenders every time he tees it up. He would have won the Masters but for the extraordinary heroics of Spieth. At the US Open he drove the ball better than ever — ‘what a shame it wasn’t a traditional US Open venue,’ he lamented — but suffered like so many on the greens, and finished a disappointing tied 27th.

After that, Rose retreated to the family home in Albany in the Bahamas. He and Kate made the big decision to relocate from the hustle and bustle of Orlando this time last year. ‘It was a lifestyle choice really, and it’s worked out great,’ said Rose.