Rose leads at Aronimink

Jul 03, 2010

By: norris

By NEIL GEOGHEGAN
Staff Writer

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. – Justin Rose is doing and saying all of the right things.

The 29-year-old Londoner is on the cusp of notching the second PGA Tour victory of his up-and-down career heading into the final round of the AT&T National, which wraps up today at Aronimink Golf Club. His game sure appears rock solid and his mental approach is realistic and healthy. The only hurdle, it seems, is overcoming his past.

At 10-under-par 200, Rose holds a commanding 4-stroke lead through 54 holes following another impressive round on the challenging greens of Aronimink. His 3-under 67 on Saturday was tied for the second lowest effort of the day, he is now one of just two players in the field to have three rounds in the 60s, and nobody in golf is on a roll quite like Rose. He’s held at least a share of the lead in seven of his last 11 rounds.

The problem is that Rose has been here before, and the end results have been disappointing.

“I felt a couple times I’ve been unlucky, that I felt like I’ve gone out and done a good job, and it just hasn’t happened,” Rose acknowledged. “But again, a couple times I haven’t been ready if I’m honest. I think that’s true, too.”
His 1-shot lead midway through this tournament marked the eighth time in Rose’s career that he held at least a share of the 36-hole lead. But the fact that he has just one career victory – at this year’s Memorial Tournament – is an indication that Rose has had trouble closing the deal.

“At the end of the day, it’s a game, it’s a golf course,” Rose said. “If you can break it down to that simple level, it makes the game easier. Obviously we play to win, but the challenge of winning is keeping it down to only the things you can control and doing it better than everybody else.”

Rose has been in this exact position five previous times and is 0-for-5. And one of those misses came last Sunday when Rose held a 3-stroke lead through 54 holes of the Travelers Championship near Hartford, Conn., but fell all the way to ninth place after a sloppy 75.

“That’s why a golf tournament is 72 holes,” Rose said. “The lead really doesn’t mean much until you close it out.

“I just know that (today) I have a great opportunity once again, but I’m more excited about the opportunity of putting into play the lessons I’ve learned in Hartford than actually going out and winning the golf tournament.

“I think the attitude at the moment is not how many golf tournaments can I win but how good can I get, and whether that means winning once this year only or whether that means winning five times this year, I don’t know.”
With birdies at Nos. 1, 5 and 13, Rose extended his lead to three and became the first player in the field to reach 10-under. He promptly stumbled for the only time on Saturday at the par-3 14th to end a streak of 32 bogey-free holes dating back to the first round.

“I thought the key moment of the day actually was a bogey I made on 14,” Rose said. “I probably hit the wrong club there and I was in a wicked lie, long left. I tried to actually play safe to get it on the green, couldn’t even hit the green and then got even a worse lie. I managed to chop it to 4 feet and made the putt. That was probably the only little bit of emotion I showed all day with a fist pump.”

But Rose bounced back with another lengthy birdie at the difficult 17th, this time from about 17 feet, to get back to 10-under at a time when just about everybody was faltering on U.S. Open-type conditions.
There were also more and a few important par saves, but none was bigger than at the par-5 9th, where he overcame an errant drive and a near sideways second shot by getting up and down from about 94 yards, sinking a 7-foot putt.

And now, just 18 solid holes stand between Rose from his second victory in a month. Now he needs to learn from the lessons of the past.
“I think it’s just about not brushing stuff under the carpet, facing up to what did I do well, what did I do badly (and) how can I do something better going forward,” Rose explained.

“It’s just taking the time to do it, to get over the disappointment and thinking, okay, how can I learn. It’s not rocket science. I’m not like asking myself Einstein-type questions, it’s just maybe putting aside ten minutes to go through it and think, okay, what can I learn, how can I do better and how can I play it.

“That to me is the exciting thing about tomorrow is can I play what I’ve learned.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.