Apr. 11—AUGUSTA — Justin Rose didn't hear the chatter Thursday night.
He left the grounds at Augusta National Golf Club with a three-shot lead at the 89th Masters Tournament, the fifth time in the 44-year-old Englishman's 20 starts here where he's held at least a share of the lead after 18 holes.
The questions soon followed — so now what? Rose's second-round scoring average in those previous four occurrences? Seventy-four. He's played himself out of contention in round two more often than he's kept himself in it, but that was all just noise. He left the course again Friday with the lead to himself, but with plenty of golf still to play for the day, at which point he could address those questions about his past second-round performances.
"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," he said with a smile and a wink after putting the finishing touches on a round of 71 to reach 8 under through 36 holes. "Sometimes it's hard to follow a low round with another one. Just the nature of it sometimes. 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."
Rose opened the 2025 Masters with a blistering 65, with a bogey on the par-4 18th serving as his only dropped shot of the day. It wasn't quite as clean on day two, with four birdies and three bogeys, but he credited some clean up-and-downs with his wedges that kept the stress from skyrocketing and kept him from dropping any more shots.
"Yeah, I think overall it felt like a pretty quick turnaround from yesterday evening, getting into this morning, which is good, obviously, off the back of a good round. You want to try to go out there and keep the momentum going," he said. "There's a bit of a sense that the course is playing a little bit differently today. A bit windier, for sure, out of a slightly different direction. So just trying to make some of those adjustments. I think it was a fairly favorable wind for the golf course in general, which is why I think you're seeing some good scores."
Score-wise, Rose was treading water. Still, saving pars that could have been bogeys are momentum-builders, especially with players like Bryson DeChambeau, Viktor Hovland and Rory McIlroy making their charges near the lead — and defending champion Scottie Scheffler just starting his second round by the time Rose was finished.
That's the kind of leaderboard Rose wants to top, and it makes him feel better to see his name in there with all the top-ranked young guns as opposed to a lesser field.
"Yeah, it does. Yeah, you know, that's the company that I expect to keep, and that's where I have tried to be my whole career," he said. "That's where I've been for a lot of my career. So I've been a top-10 player in the world for a decade or more. So yeah, this is nice to, obviously, yeah, be back in that mix, a hundred percent."
Rose was the solo leader through 36 holes in 2004, only to shoot 81 on Saturday to tie for 22nd while Phil Mickelson made his long-awaited major breakthrough to win the green jacket. He was alone at the top 17 years later, only to fade with a Sunday 74 that left him five shots behind Hideki Matsuyama in seventh place.
He's now held more 18-hole leads than anyone in Masters history, a record he took from six-time champion Jack Nicklaus. He did plenty on Friday to keep his name at the beginning of the conversation about the ...
