I don't feel like I have to find something in myself - Justin Rose taking belief from Masters near-misses

Justin Rose insists there is no scar tissue from his Masters heartbreaks as he prepares for a 21st attempt to win the Green Jacket at Augusta National.

The Englishman already has a career that would be the envy of almost anyone who has ever played the game as a World Number One, Major winner, Olympic champion, number one on both sides of the Atlantic and Ryder Cup great.

But such is the mystique of the year’s first Major, many will also remember him for being a three-time Masters runner-up, with only Tom Weiskopf having finished second more times without winning.

While Jordan Spieth was a convincing wire-to-wire winner in 2015, Rose lost play-offs to Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy respectively in 2017 and 2025.

But rather than be despondent about his near-misses, Rose takes confidence from getting so close to glory.

“I hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and do it,” 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 it owes me anything. I come here with a good sort of attitude. I come here with it's a place that I enjoy being. There's certain places you get to and you take a deep breath and go, ‘right, it's nice to be here’. That still is one of them for me, Augusta still is one of those places for me.

“I'm very aware that I've been close here. I'm very aware that I've had tough, tough losses here. I also am aware that I enjoy this place. I don't want to feel that those three second-place finishes need to create a different sort of feeling for me.

“I can't control the outcome. I think last year in the play-off, I felt like I learned from 2017, and I felt like I played a much better play-off than I did previously.

“So I kind of adapted and learned. I knew what was coming. I did the right things. I executed. I made two good swings, made a reasonable putt, I thought. So, yeah, I did everything that I could do. So I can kind of live with that in a way.

“I can be philosophical about it, I think. I look at it and think those are racking up, they're stacking up, yeah. I think eight players have won this tournament after finishing second the year before, which probably increases my odds if you look at the field. I can look at that and go, ‘OK, that's good. Happy with that’.

“I can only turn up on Thursday and execute. That's all I can do. And get here on Monday and enjoy it. Those are the two things that I have control over.”

Rose’s ability to take the positives from his near-misses perhaps stems from an inauspicious start to his professional career, when he famously missed his first 21 cuts.

And the 45-year-old – who would become the second oldest Masters champion if he were to win on Sunday – believes he has long-since learned to take the rough with the smooth.

“I kind of realised that even before I won a Major,” he said. “I knew I was going to win some, I knew I was going to lose some. I kind of wanted to not get in my way too early and I kind of realised when the opportunity presents itself to win a Major, don't make it too important in the moment.

"Also, I kind of realised that you can't skip through a career without a little bit of heartache and heartbreak, no chance. If you're going to be willing to win them, you've got to be willing to kind of be on the wrong side of it as well.

"The key is showing up. The key is to try to be as free as you can in those moments. You kind of have to hope a little bit along the way that it's your day. It could have been my day in a couple of Major Championships that I wouldn't have had to have done anything different really to be the winner as well.

“Hopefully with that mindset, keep chipping away, my day might still happen where a little bit of something goes my way.

“The point is you've got to put yourself there. That's the hard part. All we can do as players is to focus on our game, focus on our skill set, and make the odds in our favour the best we can. Sometimes the ultimate result is in your control but sometimes there's a lot of other factors and little bits of movement that all have to kind of sync up.

“The better player you are, the more chances you're going to have and the more you're going to win.”