Will Rose's McLaren club gamble pay off?

Justin Rose was always likely to attract plenty of attention at this week's Cadillac Championship.

But there will be even more eyes on the 45-year-old Englishman as he prepares to use his new McLaren Golf clubs for the first time when the PGA Tour returns to Doral's Blue Monster Course in Miami.

The 2013 US Open champion has become McLaren's first tour professional as the Formula 1 team enter the golf market.

With his old equipment, Rose has been playing well this year. He won at Torrey Pines in February and prepared assiduously for the Masters in an attempt to go one better than his 2025 play-off defeat by Rory McIlroy.

For 64 holes at Augusta he was brilliant, building a two-stroke advantage before faltering at Amen Corner. He finished in a share of third place as McIlroy retained the Green Jacket.

There was nothing to suggest Rose would want to switch from the hotchpotch make-up of his golf bag. Free from any manufacturer deal, he could play the clubs he wanted, and the ones he chose clearly worked well.

But Rose had been quietly fostering a relationship with the McLaren team that was much deeper than merely befriending golf-mad driver Lando Norris and CEO Zak Brown.

Brown was looking to diversify and join the golf manufacturer market - and Rose was his vehicle. This week the Miami Grand Prix is in town, not far from Doral, and it seems the ideal moment to announce this unlikely business and sporting relationship.

"It's something I've been involved with from the outset - helping the engineering team, really testing the very first editions of the club," said Rose.

"I've been kind of working with the project for well over a year probably. It's been exciting to this week finally launch it."

Four-year barren streak

Rose fans are entitled to be fearful. Many a golf career has hit buffers with a lucrative shift to a new manufacturer, Rose's included.

He was the Olympic champion and a recent world number one when he signed with Japanese firm Honma. He posted a victory soon after the deal in 2019 but did not win again on the PGA Tour for four years.

After extricating himself from the deal, Rose went it alone until signing with McLaren.

"I'm looking to mitigate risk," he said.

"I've done this once before in 2019 and I learned a lot from that process. So I feel a bit better placed now to go down this path."

All professional golfers who move manufacturers speak highly of their new equipment. Rose is no different.

"I'm looking at some of the performance data that I'm getting on the range and [it is] out-performing what I have. That's the exciting part for me," he said.

What are the potential pitfalls?