– Justin Rose (-21) keeps alive the determined march towards his thirteenth victory on the PGA Tour (this fact, if we think about it, further highlights the twenty wins of Scheffler achieved last week). The Englishman passed the halfway point of the round today in the same manner as in previous days, with a five-under-par on ten holes that pointed towards extraterrestrial records. Then, on the back nine, he encountered the first serious problems of the week, faced the first delicate crossroads, and the proof is that he closed the round with three bogeys, while in the previous two rounds he had only signed one.
However, his golf remained stable enough to deliver an excellent card of 68 strokes on the South course at Torrey Pines and stay at the top of the leaderboard, with a juicy six-stroke lead over his closest pursuer, Joel Dhamen (-15). Sunday strolls in golf, with a standout leader, are fraught with danger, but the truth is that the tee-to-green game displayed by Rose, imperial, seems a sufficient guarantee to think of anything other than his victory.
– Rose is on the verge of surpassing the best winning record in the history of this tournament, which of course is held by Tiger Woods and dates back to the last century: the Cypress genius won in 1999 with a total of -22. Justin remains the only Englishman to have won at Torrey Pines, as tomorrow he could add his second triumph: he won the Farmers in 2019, curiously with a score of -21, also very high.
– Needless to say, Rose declined the opportunity to captain the European team for the Ryder in Ireland 2027, convinced that his game is still capable of competing for victories like the one he could add to his record this week. They are welcome, although the Englishman’s true obsession, or let’s call it a great objective if preferred, is to add at least one more victory in the Majors to stand alongside that distant 2013 US Open win.
All his preparation revolves around the four major events, and yet there is hardly a year when Rose does not suffer some sort of mishap in them, more or less cruel. Since his victory at Merion, in that US Open, he has accumulated five second places, two of them after losing playoffs (against Sergio and Rory at the Masters), the last of them last year, just before missing the cut in the next two majors, PGA and US Open. Something or someone always crosses his path. Rose will turn 46 in July, and competitive logic dictates that there shouldn’t be too many opportunities left for him, although it might not seem that way watching him this week in San Diego. Either way, if he wins tomorrow, he will enter the Masters within the world top ten and, therefore, as one of the main favourites. Augusta National owes something to this player, who refuses to give up, who won’t stop until he wins another Major. His victory tomorrow at Torrey Pines still needs to be confirmed; and later we’ll see if this week of his with red-hot, guided irons was or wasn’t the decisive launchpad for his dreams.
