AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | Through two rounds of the 90th Masters, Justin Rose has once again put himself in position to be a factor on the weekend.
The 45-year-old Englishman – who led through 36 holes last year and made an astounding 10 birdies in a Sunday 66 before losing to Rory McIlroy’s career Grand Slam-clinching birdie on the first extra hole – added a Friday 69 to his opening 70 to enter the weekend at 5-under par and on the first page of the leaderboard at Augusta National.
Despite his playoff loss last year – his second at Augusta after falling to Sergio García in 2017 – Rose arrived this year having won twice on the PGA Tour in the preceding eight months, capturing the FedEx St. Jude Championship last August in a playoff with J.J. Spaun and the Farmers Insurance Open in a February cakewalk at Torrey Pines.
Asked earlier this week whether his Masters near-misses have boosted his belief or left permanent scars, Rose leaned toward the former.
“I hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and [win],” he said. “I feel like I’ve pretty much done what it takes to win. I just haven’t kind of walked over the line. I feel like I’ve executed well enough to have done the job.
“From that point of view, I don’t feel like I have to find something in myself to kind of do something different. I truly believe that. No, I don’t feel like [Augusta] owes me anything. I come here with a good sort of attitude. I come here with … it’s a place that I enjoy being.”
After posting a 70 Thursday afternoon that left him three strokes off the lead held jointly by early finishers McIlroy and Sam Burns, Rose started with a bogey Friday morning and looked like he might fall further back after his drive on No. 5 went wide right and settled under a tree. But after pitching out, Rose hit his 170-yard third shot to within 3 feet of the hole and saved par.
Rose kept his card clean coming home and acknowledged afterward that his Friday mindset somewhat resembled the head space he found during the final round last year.
“I felt like momentum was definitely going the wrong way at that point in my round, so I think I did a good job of digging in at that point and rebuilding the round,” he said.
The rebuilding began with a birdie from 24 feet at the 450-yard seventh. After parring No. 8, Rose reeled off three straight birdies around the turn to reach 5-under, draining a 10-footer at No. 9 and staking his approaches within 4 feet at both 10 and 11.
Despite giving a stroke back at 12 and burning the right edge with a 4-foot birdie putt on 14, Rose rebounded with a birdie at the par-5 15th, getting up and down after his second shot from 245 yards missed the green to the right. At that point in the round, he was tied for the lead at 5-under with McIlroy, Burns and his countryman Tyrrell Hatton, who was 7-under for the day through 17 holes.
Rose kept his card clean coming home and acknowledged afterward that his Friday mindset somewhat resembled the head space he found during the final round last year.
“I felt like if I was thinking anything, I was thinking birdie,” Rose said. “That’s a nice mode to be in, and that felt similar to Sunday [in 2025]. That Sunday of the Masters last year, I felt like I needed to birdie every hole. I kind of wasn’t aware what Rory was going to do on 13, all these type of things. I was just trying to run to the clubhouse as fast and hard as I could.
“That’s the luxury of playing from behind sometimes. But there’s a lesson in there of that’s the best way to play sometimes, too.”
As he pursues the green jacket for the 21st time, the 2013 U.S. Open champion said he doesn’t need last year’s result to fuel him.
“It’s the obvious – of course I want to win this tournament,” Rose said. “I don’t really need to try any harder … I just think the experience in that is [that] probably trying harder ain’t going to help me. So that’s probably the dance I’m doing with myself. I know the intrinsic motivation is there. It’s about execution, and typically when you play your best golf, you’re always [lightening] it up rather than getting more intense.”