‘Yeah, it did validate the decision’ - Farmers Insurance winner Rose happy he turned down LIV to chase childhood dreams

Justin Rose

Justin Rose cruised to a wire-to-wire seven-shot win in the Farmers Insurance Open to leap to third in the world and insisted his great form in his forties justifies his decision to turn down LIV Golf and bid for more major glory

The 45-year-old Englishman became the oldest man to go wire to wire on the PGA TOUR since Rocco Mediate in 2010 after he closed with a two under 70 to win with a record 23-under par aggregate from Pierson Coody, Si Woo Kim, and Ryo Hisatsune.

Seamus Power tied for 11th in 12 under after a closing 71, but while the West Waterford man won $193,029, he will miss out on a spot in next week’s first Signature Event, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, after falling out of the Aon Swing 5 with a one-over par weekend.

Power was solo second, four shots behind leader Rose, heading into the third round, but a 74 dented his chances of making it to Pebble Beach.

The good news is that he ended his week ranked 31st in the FedExCup standings and despite struggling from the tee to green at the weekend, he topped the putting statistics and looks to be close to his best for his next start at the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches in Florida in three weeks.

More importantly, he’s fully fit again and feeling sharp after putting two years of physical struggles behind him.

“I feel like everything's kind of ready to go, which I haven't been the last couple of years,” Power said last week. “I feel like I'm ready to play, which is a really nice feeling.”

As for Rose, he never looked like being caught at Torrey Pines’ South Course and later revealed that his decision to turn down a reported $60-65m offer to join LIV Golf in 2022 was validated by last night’s win.

In a week when Brooks Koepka returned from LIV to the PGA TOUR, finishing 56th, and Patrick Reed left LIV to begin his journey back to the US circuit, Rose explained that going to the Saudi-backed tour was never a temptation.

“Yeah, I feel like, yeah, my career goals (winning all four Majors and Ryder Cups) have always only been attainable by staying on the European Tour and the PGA TOUR because access to them is not possible the other way,” Rose said

“But obviously I want to play in amongst the best players in the world. That, obviously, is kind of what keeps me motivated, what keeps me hungry, what keeps me pushing.

“So yeah, it would have been easy to potentially do other things, but none of that excited me, I don't think really. And none of it gave me access to what I wanted to achieve.

“So I kind of always felt like my childhood self wouldn't feel very good about making that decision and kind of giving up on those dreams.

“I feel like, yeah, I've been close. I would say, you know, sniffing and knocking on the door of a couple of majors since those decisions were made and those moments.

“Yeah, it did validate the decision. The way things are in the world of golf right now, I feel like it's good to see people wanting to kind of play where it motivates them to be their best.”

The majors remain the biggest focus for Rose, who won the 2013 US Open and came close to winning the Open in 2024 and the Masters last year, finishing joint runner-up behind Xander Schauffele at Royal Troon before losing in a playoff to Rory McIlroy at Augusta.

“Yeah, majors is where I have my attention, for sure,” said Rose, who also won Olympic gold in 2016.

“I've achieved a lot in the game, but I've achieved a lot of it just once. So I’ll take multiple of anything that I've achieved for sure. That would be great.

“But if I look at my career, yeah, I've been really close to The Open, I've been really close to the Masters.

"The dream of winning all four was obviously the ultimate goal since I've been a kid. “But it seems a long way off to think that way, but if you think about some of the results I've had in the last year or 18 months, I'm not that far away, so may as well keep believing.”

As for his 13th PGA TOUR win, he was thrilled to win at Torrey Pines for the second time since 2019 with such a mentally disciplined performance.

“There was a lot of sort of real, I guess, mental maturity from a strategic golf point of view out there,” Rose said of the way he built his lead and continued to press ahead.

“Maybe that's something that I haven't been able to achieve before either, so a lot of self-satisfaction in that one.

“I think you look at the best players in history, Jack, Tiger, I'm going to say Scottie Scheffler now as well, that's the sort of thing that they do really well week in and week out and I feel like that's something that I did really, really well this week.”