AUGUSTA, Ga. — After firing an opening-round 65 to take a three-shot lead, Justin Rose was still a distant third favorite to win the 2025 Masters at sportsbooks around the country. Most golf analysts didn’t show him much more respect when it came to predicting how the weekend would play out.
To be fair, Scottie Scheffler, the World No. 1 and defending champ, remained the overwhelming favorite to win. And to be fair, we’ve seen this story from Rose before. Several times.
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Rose’s start gave him at least a share of the Day 1 lead at Augusta National for a fifth time, breaking Jack Nicklaus’ tournament mark. Unlike the Golden Bear who has six green jackets, Rose is still looking for his first. But he took an important step toward writing a different script on Friday with a second-round 71 that kept him at the top of the leaderboard.
After, Rose was asked about whether he had heard any of his doubters between rounds. And he gave a fantastic answer.
“No, which is good,” said Rose, who made four birdies and three bogeys on the day. “Glad you told me now, not this morning. That’s probably why I’m not going to watch TV all afternoon. So thank you, yeah. What do they know? That’s why they are pundits.”
The 44-year-old Englishman was understandably in great spirits, but deep down he must have figured people were talking about his unusual track record at Augusta. Rose had averaged shooting 74 those previous four times he tried to follow up a fast start. But he also had an understandable explanation for that.
“Sometimes it’s hard to follow a low round with another one. Just the nature of it sometimes,” he said. “But I feel like if you’re playing good golf, you’re playing good golf, you know. And I feel like I wasn’t pinned to yesterday’s round and I wasn’t pinned to the leaderboard and I wasn’t pinned to leading this golf tournament. Yeah, I was pretty focused on the job at hand.”
Justin Rose holds the clubhouse lead at the completion of his second round. #themasters pic.twitter.com/8L2fembfxI
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 11, 2025
He also explained he actually wasn’t playing good golf in 2021, the last time this happened when he opened 65-72 to take the 36-hole lead before fading over the weekend to finishing seventh.
“Yeah, in 2021, I don’t even know how I did that; I was playing so badly,” Rose said. “So that was kind of out of the blue, really.”
But this year, he’s starting to see green. And he’s going to continue to try to keep from hearing the pundits talk about his chances.
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
