MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 9, 2026

Justin Rose

Quick Quotes

Q. Talk me through the round.

JUSTIN ROSE: I think overall a good start. Just big-picture, kind of knew the course was going to be playing tricky today, especially this afternoon. Yesterday was quite a windy day. This morning was cold. I thought it was going to take a lot of the moisture out of the golf course.

Obviously it was a beautiful afternoon. Wind laid down a little bit. It was nice to play out there. Obviously my day, yeah, spoiled a little bit by two late bogeys, but other than that, I think a good start to the tournament.

Q. A lot of players seem to be struggling a little bit on the back nine. The scores were much better on the front.

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, it's normally the other way around on this golf course. Normally the back nine offers you the opportunities. The par-5 greens are getting much firmer now, so going for those greens in two is not such an easy thing.

I think today laying up on 13 was probably having a little wedge into the front pin was probably easier. Brooks hit two good shots, was at the back of the green, almost an impossible two-putt. They weren't yielding birdies which they might have done, which then makes the back nine feel pretty difficult, yeah.

Q. Shane was saying he feels that the course was playing the most difficult he's ever had been since here. He thinks that because the weather that it can be the toughest Masters, he said.

JUSTIN ROSE: It's set that way, right? The weather is perfect. I think it's going to get warmer. I don't know what the wind forecast is.

This course can play harder if it's windy, right, and I think that's the only thing that would make it play harder really. But 2007 for me -- I know Shane probably didn't play in 2007, but when Zach Johnson won, I felt like that was very crispy, cold, windy. That was probably the toughest I've seen it play.

Q. Were you surprised at all that it wasn't a little bit windier as you wandered throughout the day?

JUSTIN ROSE: That was the forecast actually, so I wasn't surprised. I was quite grateful to see that, yeah. It still cost me a couple of shots, to be honest. I still got the wind wrong on 14 and 17, and because it was dying, there was still the occasional gust to kind of puff through.

Listen, it's never easy. Even five-mile-an-hour wind if it doesn't settle in one direction, you can still make mistakes because as the greens get firmer, your targets get smaller, so it's more and more critical.

Q. With the wind blowing and the course dry, are there any specific moments today where you leaned on experience, maybe even more so than what your eyes were telling you?

JUSTIN ROSE: Every hole. No, well, every hole you're just being patient through experience, knowing that grinding out the pars is a good thing. Just eating up the holes is a good thing. You know, getting through Amen Corner is a good thing. All these things, you just know how the golf course can play at times, yeah.

So every little mini-victory you had out there was worth celebrating. I guess that's, yeah -- experience doesn't really make it any easier. It just makes you know what to expect.

Q. Do you have an assumption of what this golf course is going to look like on the weekend after playing it today?

JUSTIN ROSE: You might get a yellow jacket if you win. They might look a bit different color, yeah. I don't know (laughing).

Listen, I think it would be nice if it's still -- the shot values are still there. There's firm to a point, right? I think that's a great golf. When it gets completely rock hard and you can't access any pin anywhere, then it just becomes -- a lot of good shot-making it taken out of the equation.

We'll see how they -- I think it's in their control really how they want it to be. But, yeah, I think overall every player would say they would like it firm and fast, but I think there's, like, a boundary to that, yeah.

Q. Going into the second round, presumably 3 behind, how are you going to play it tomorrow?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, I mean, I think the lead at this point is irrelevant. I think there's so much golf ahead that, yeah, there's no point in even looking at who is doing what at this moment in time.

It's just about, like I said, just executing your strategy, feeling like you can run the clock down, playing as well as you can, and then towards the end you've got to kind of figure out if you need to change your strategy, but until the final few holes really it's just about doing as good as can you do.

Q. Is there a particular part of the golf course where you feel like no matter what the wind is doing, no matter how dry it is you can still be aggressive, places you can get aggressive even at its toughest?

JUSTIN ROSE: Honestly, I can't even point to anywhere where you can be aggressive, if I'm honest. Yeah, no. I think aggressive hurts you out here, yeah, yeah (smiling).