The most satisfying Masters winner is the one nobody's talking about

Justin Rose has the chance to close out a career journey in the making.Getty Images

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The wait was agonizing for Justin Rose.

As he stood over his chip shot from the back side of the 4th green on Masters Saturday, you could sense Rose’s discomfort. He was six under for the tournament, six shots back of Rory McIlroy, and the time to mount a moving day charge was already growing thin. He’d started his day with two pars and a birdie, not bad scores, but arguably losing one shot to the field on the birdie-able second hole. Now, on the 4th, he’d flushed an iron too good, and was staring at a short-sided chip down a lightning-fast slope with everything to lose.

But then, finally, it was his turn to play, so he stepped to his shot, took a deep breath, and began his charge.

It didn’t look like much at first, a little squibbed bunt that shot low and fast on the hardpan and slowed on the big hump at the back of the 4th green, but then it was tracking … and then Rose was tracking it, too, walking several steps out to his left as he followed it down towards the hole. And then Rose could not help himself — just as his ball scared the hole, he scared himself, jolting forward as his ball came to rest in tap-in range.

Strange as it seemed, it was a quintessential moment for the golfer nobody’s talking about at the event he wants more than anything. Rose has spent a lifetime as one of the sport’s most theatrical players, leaning headlong into his instincts for the dramatic even in the dullest moments of his professional life. Now, at the Masters, those theatrics have fueled him in consecutive years to the very thick of things late on Sunday afternoon, where he will begin just three shots off the lead.

“You enjoy the experience here Monday to Wednesday, and then I don’t think you enjoy another golf shot for the rest of the week,” Rose said, in typical Rosian fashion, on Saturday evening. “There’s high risk and high reward on every shot you hit here.”

Of course, Rose certainly looked like he was enjoying it on Saturday, the same day he recorded four birdies to no bogeys to vault up the leaderboard and within striking distance of his career’s white whale. He also looked like he was enjoying it a year ago, on the second Sunday in April 2025, when he went ballistic, recording no pars in his final eight holes (six birdies and two bogeys) to stun his way into a playoff with a backsliding Rory McIlroy.

Truth is, Rose has always looked like he was enjoying it at Augusta National, where theatrics have always been tolerated, if not encouraged. The only thing he hasn’t enjoyed is the losing, which has arrived in unusually painful fashion over and over again over the course of his Masters life — a legacy that currently reads as one of the most prolific players in tournament history … but still winless. It’s this swagger, these dramatics, and this history that make Rose the obvious choice to succeed McIlroy as the green jacket winner in 2026 — if we’re picking our winners based on the quality of their winning story, anyway — even if there’s something about Rose that leads him prone to being overlooked.

Yes, last year, McIlroy was responsible for much of the diminishment. We quickly forgot about the small miracle Rose pulled to force the playoff with McIlroy because we were so gobsmacked by the image of McIlroy on the ground after clinching the career grand slam.

But perhaps we shouldn’t have.

Rose has been one of the best players in the world in the four years since the start of his self-professed “Indian Summer” — a stretch of good play that has carried his game into his 40s and included runaway wins at Torrey Pines and in the Ryder Cup. He’s also been one of the best players in the world at the Masters, recording seven top-10 finishes and three runners-up in three decades competing at the event.

On Saturday evening, Rose still looked like a man with his Masters dreams very much alive, particularly after he strutted his way up the 18th fairway with his typical swagger, greeted the crowd with his typical cordial histrionics, and then poured in the final par of a bogey-less Saturday to enter this Masters Sunday still in the hunt.

“I mean, after Saturday I was pretty crushed actually last year. I felt like I had really given away the Masters and any opportunity I had to win that day,” Rose said. “Turned a 69 to a 75 is how it felt. I started the day seven back. Yeah, you know you can shoot 61. You know you can, but seven back is a long way to come from.”

On Sunday, the same chance will present itself again to Rose, who is no doubt familiar with how it feels. At 45, he would be the second-oldest winner of the event ever, behind only Nicklaus in ’86. That’s a lot of experience, sure, but Nicklaus was a stunner at 46, and he’d already won five green jackets.

“People have been pulling for me this week,” Rose said. “Obviously should I kind of get going tomorrow, that would be a lot of fun to play in that environment.”

Indeed, it would be fun. And it would almost certainly be show-stopping theater.

It always is for Justin Rose, even if nobody’s watching.

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