James Lawton: Rose falls short of major glory but releases burden of youthful promise

Right from the start there was something in Justin Rose that encouraged the highest hopes. Not just in his talent but in his nature, his understanding of the vagaries and cruelties of life as well as golf.

This ­ we learned amid the dusk and the fireflies last night ­ was not an illusion. He didn't win the fabled green jacket, not quite, but he did earn something almost as valuable. He proved, beyond serious doubt, that he was rather more than one old and fading burst of youthful promise.

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Before his challenge ended at the 17th he had shown that he had the game and the nerve to compete at the highest level. It was something on which to build, surely; something to say that he would be back with serious intent.

That was more than he could have hoped for when he made a convulsive start to his last round with Tiger Woods at his heels. He made double-bogey, birdie, double-bogey. It was a staccato lurch towards another broken dream. Yet Rose burst back with an extraordinary run of three birdies between the eighth and eleventh holes. Then he erupted again with birdies at the 15th and 16th.

This wasn't the salvaging of a little bruised pride. This was the bravest run at the glory.

When Rose became the instant, 17-year-old star at Royal Birkdale in 1998, chipping in for a share of fourth place in the Open so nervelessly, Michael Bonallack, secretary of the Royal and Ancient, was moved to say he was Britain's answer to Tiger Woods.

It was a statement of hubris submerged in ridicule soon enough with a stream of missed cuts for the still unformed professional.

Yet here, nine years on, with a hugely influential father gone, the vastly influential coach David Leadbetter replaced by a thrusting young rival, a wife acquired and a hard and sometimes lonely existence on the American golf frontier long nominated as a personal testing ground, there were times when you had to wonder if Bonallack hadn't been at least half right about Justin Rose.

Going into the final stages of what some believe is the hardest test of golfers ever staged here in 71 tournaments, his demeanour alone warranted some re-appraisal.

You could do this on several levels. His third-round resistance on Saturday to the idea that he would inevitably follow the route he took here three years ago, when he led the field after two rounds, before rocketing to a third-round 81, was a mark of significant improvement.

As most of the field threw up its arms ­ even Woods at one point fell to his knees and wrapped his hands over his head ­ Rose continued to graft without complaint.

Twenty four hours after Lee Westwood, the Ryder Cup luminary, had complained bitterly about the essential unfairness of the tests being set by the course, Rose was invited to go along the same way.

The question was put carefully. Was the course tough or unfair? Rose, unlike so many of his rivals, rejected the lure of self-pity. He said, " Really, I think it was tough.

"In the course set-up I don't think you could question where they put the flags. I certainly wasn't out there thinking, 'this is ridiculous'. It was just tough. You had to land the ball in a matter of a foot or two feet or three feet sometimes on a hole, which is obviously a tiny margin. But at the same time that's the way the course is playing, no matter where the pin was placed. So it's just what you have to do."

Maybe in self-defence, Rose has always claimed that his last day recovery in 2004 ­ when he shaved 10 shots off his third-round disaster ­ was a source of great pride. But then he was probably bound to say that; infinitely more impressive, surely, was the resilience he showed here over the last two days when Woods, despite losing control to the point of bogeys on the last two holes of the third round, seemed to be drawing the entire field back to him as though with some fiendish magnet. Rose, however, stayed outside of the field of influence. He had been asked another loaded question. Was he pleased to be partnering Ireland's Padraig Harrington rather than the Tiger Woods of the entire sports universe, a circumstance created by no more than the fact that Woods, who shared the same third-round score of three-over, was first into the clubhouse.

"I just think," Rose replied, "that maybe winning in his group would be a sweeter feeling than winning not in his group. But I must say that either way, I'm expecting an extremely tough day. I am sure, though, that playing with him and winning, beating him down the stretch, would be a sweeter feeling than not winning that way."

The question was maybe not so academic....not when you considered how many superior talents have dwindled the moment they have been placed alongside the Tiger. Ten years ago Colin Montgomerie was ravaged by the level of Woods' self belief, a crushing which some believe represented the point in the Scot's career when, deep down, he grasped finally that he would probably never win a major title.

Five years ago, when Woods was winning his third green jacket, Retief Goosen, a US Open-winner, was so heavily invaded some wondered if he would ever recover.

Rose knows the lore of golf and knows the potential consequences of a bad day in the company of the Tiger, but then here he was, when another Masters' chance had come calling, coolly discussing his disappointment that he would not be entering the mouth of the cannon.

Bravado? Maybe, but it is not the Rose style.

In Saturday's moment of triumph he laughed at himself. When, asked a sombre American analyst, were your course management skills last tested to this extent?

"Yesterday," said Rose. "And before that, the day before that. My coach Nick [Bradley] said when he was driving me out of the course after the first round, 'That's got to be the toughest round you'll ever play at Augusta'.

"And then after the second day, he said, 'That's got to be the toughest round you'll ever play at Augusta'. And today I'm waiting for it, 'That's the toughest round you'll ever play ­ until tomorrow'."

For the Tiger, who was partnered with the Australian Stuart Appleby ­ maybe an early victim of Woods syndrome when he ballooned to a triple-bogey on the 17th on Saturday night ­ the imperative was clear enough. He had to re-impose the intimidating authority which slipped somewhat at times even while most of the field was cowering its way back into his company throughout the third and fourth rounds.

For him it always seemed liked the most draining of demands, and this time he couldn't quite do it. He couldn't beat the winner Zach Johnson and it was not until Rose, awash with adrenalin, double-bogeyed the 17th that he moved past the Englishman with whom he had once been so outrageously compared.

For Rose, amid the pain, it was surely one mark of progress.