» ROSE WINS AT TORREY PINES
SAN DIEGO — At exactly 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, the leaderboard for the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines was as star-crossed as you could find in any PGA Tour event. Any major, for that matter.
Among the top six names, there were five former major champions and a previous Farmers titlist who ranks seventh in the world.
Justin Rose, Adam Scott, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Reed and Jon Rahm.
And yet, the battle of the titans down the stretch looked less like MMA and more like patty cake.
Rose, the world’s No. 1 golfer, mustered all of the wisdom of his 19 years in professional golf and saw to that.
After a shaky start in which he bogeyed three of his first five holes, Rose righted himself with some veteran mental tricks and closed with a 3-under-par 69 on the Torrey Pines South Course to win the Farmers Open by two shots over Adam Scott (68).
After his own early foibles that included a missed putt from less than two feet, Scott rallied to finish with four straight birdies. His total of 19 under would have won all but four of the tournaments played at Torrey Pines since 1969.
That’s how good Rose was, and if the victory doesn’t rank up there with him capturing the 2013 U.S. Open or the Olympic gold medal in the 2016 Summer Games, it will be cherished for the company he kept and the track on which he excelled.
The milestones he achieved during the week were many.
Rose’s 21-under 267 total came up one short of the tournament record set by Tiger Woods in his first victory at Torrey Pines in 1999.
Rose bested Woods in one respect, shooting 63-66-69-69 to become the first player since Peter Jacobsen in 1995 (on far easier courses here) to record four rounds in the 60s at Torrey Pines.
With his 10th victory in America, Rose became the all-time winningest Englishman in the modern era; the $1.27 million first prize pushed him past $50 million in career earnings; and his first January win since 2002 extended to 10 straight years Rose has won an event somewhere in the world.
“There’s a lot of cool things,” the 38year-old Rose said with bright smile. “Yeah, today’s been a good day.
“I mean, 21 under par is great golf, obviously,” he added. “But you had to do it. Adam Scott got right there and played some great golf coming down the stretch. It was a tricky day today. A three-shot lead is never easy, and just the start was, anything that could go wrong did go wrong.
“So I felt like I had to work for this one today . ... There’s a few little extra pieces that make this win a fun one.”
There was even a rallying cry for Rose this week: His longtime caddie, Mark Fulcher, underwent heart valve replacement surgery in New York this month, and Rose played the last two weeks with Gareth Lord carrying the bag.
“It’s been an emotional week, a different week,” Rose said. “Obviously dedicated this one to my caddie, ‘Fooch,’ who’s sitting at home and probably finding it much harder to sit at home than actually being out here, and probably harder than the heart surgery itself, watching this weekend. This one’s for him.”
Starting the day with a three-shot lead put Rose in an uncomfortable position. He’d only closed out four of 14 previous attempts to capitalize when holding at least a share of the 54-hole lead. Torrey Pines is tough enough to not have allowed a third-round leader to close one out since Woods in 2008.
It looked like Rose might join the ledger of collapses when he bogeyed the first, fourth and fifth holes while tossing in a birdie at No. 3. His lead was down to two.
Rose recalled chastising himself with: “You’re No. 1 in the world for reason, just start playing like it, please.”
Said Lord, his caddie: “We talked about basically getting back to what we were doing the first three days. That’s the short of it. He sort of snapped out of it and got going again.”