Justin Rose (-7) is the first leader of the Masters Tournament after signing a card of 65 strokes, matching his best record at the Augusta National. It is the fifth time he has led this tournament after the first round, the most in history, ahead of Jack Nicklaus (4), with whom he broke this curious tie today. The point is that the Golden Bear won this tournament six times, in addition to winning twelve other Majors, and Rose stopped at that 2013 US Open which he brilliantly won at Merion…
This is not to belittle the Englishman, who has amassed achievements in his career to spare. And, moreover, anyone would come off badly in any comparison with the Golden Bear. But it is very true that Rose has never been considered a true top contender in world golf. There are, in fact, other players with fewer achievements, or newcomers, who do appear more often in predictions and somehow in the permanent list of favourites. Rose, for whatever reason, does not. And mind you, he reached World Number One, although only for thirteen weeks and never more than eight consecutively; he won that US Open; he has written legendary pages in the Ryder Cup (that match with Phil Mickelson at Medinah, for example); and there are very few years since 2007 in which he did not achieve a top ten in a major…
And yet, he is not a top contender. Today, however, as he has done many times before, he has stormed the coop and lined up all the top contenders. The coop where Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy rule. The former, indeed, gave a good response to the veteran Englishman’s great round and confirms what he already was, a clear favourite. The Northern Irishman was on the same path, with a four-under-par and the ball in the middle of the fairway on the 15th hole, but ended up running out of time with a card of 72 strokes. A ball in the water on the 15th and a dreadful 17th hole were to blame. Rory is not out of it, far from it, but he is already trailing. Today he gave a masterclass in order and patience for much of the course, but once again he was caught by the demons of Augusta. Let’s be clear and emphatic: Rory, despite everything, is not that far off, as he is only two strokes away from the top ten of the tournament, but the possibility of keeping the Grand Slam challenge alive surely depends on what he does this Friday, in the second round, because there are too many top contenders already pecking at the top of the leaderboard, as is logical and normal in a Major. Tyrrell Hatton (-3) and Bryson DeChambeau (-3), for example. Or Ludvig Aberg (-4), one of the newcomers to the coop, despite his cherubic presence. The man from Holywood should not leave all the work for the weekend, as then the rush comes. We remain, in any case, with the splendid work he has done in the first fourteen holes and therefore refuse to consider the 2025 edition as another failed attempt.
Rose finished with a bogey on the 18th to give the rest a slight breather. And it would not be normal for him to putt every day as he did today, impeccably (Scheffler can’t complain about his performance on the greens either: what two pure putts he made on holes 4 and 16). But we are talking about a top contender with a sparse crest, let’s leave it at that, very capable of taking this challenge far in his twentieth edition of the Masters (that would be another record he could surpass, that of Sergio García, who debuted here as a winner on his nineteenth attempt).
There are some who, being more or less favourites from the start, did feature in some predictions and have already been knocked out at the first hurdle. These would be the surprising cases of Russell Henley (+7) or Sepp Straka (+6). The case of Jon Rahm (+3) is different: he was indeed a fierce and undisputed candidate and now he is already with all emergency lights activated. He has no other way but the epic.
