James Lawton: Ten summers after his false dawn, Rose is ready to shine

Is there anything worse than finding your dream too soon, when it has come without pain or labour, when it happens as though it might have been carried on a gust of wind? Yes there is, Justin Rose confirmed as a gale began to blow here just in time for the start of the 137th Open. It is when you almost find your dream.

It is when you play so well as a 17-year-old that your name crackles around the linksland, when you chip into the last hole to secure fourth place and the secretary of the Royal and Ancient, the esteemed Michael Bonallack, announces: "Justin Rose is Britain's answer to Tiger Woods."

Ten years on, Rose admits that the brilliant, innocent play that brought him such instant fame the last time he played the Open here was, in the end, not so much a glory as a burden. But, no, when he thinks about it he sees it is more complicated than that. He would never hand back the feeling that came to him as the most precocious amateur British golf had ever seen.

Yesterday he was saying: "Sometimes I go over the old ground in my head. I was going to turn pro after that Open whatever happened. My reason for doing that was I felt like I had done maybe not everything in the amateur game, but a lot of what I wanted to achieve, and I was just keen to turn pro and get going. I thought I would do it quietly and get some experience under my belt before Q-school at the end of the year.

"That was the grand plan and, looking back, I remember that we all agreed, me, my dad and my advisers, that it was going to take me three years to really establish myself on the European tour. That turned out to be a remarkably accurate three-year plan, but the trouble was after playing here so well at that age everybody's expectations changed – including my own. So, yes, the truth was that finishing fourth at 17 became something of a burden."

It was one that came weighing a little heavier each time he failed to make a cut. It happened 21 times and on each occasion Royal Birkdale seemed still less a triumph than a terrible rebuke. Yet never once did Rose curse the day he became a national hero-elect. "I always have to remember, and I do, that what happened opened a lot of doors where I gained a lot of valuable experience – and some tough lessons were learnt as well. Ultimately, it's tough to look back and want to change anything because I feel as though I've come through a stronger person, and a better player. If I didn't get those hard times, having had such a high, I just don't know what would have happened."

Maybe, without the memory of the four days in his life when it seemed that every time he hit the ball it turned to either silver or gold, he would have been ground down by the sheer scale of the pressure that built up with each subsequent failure to beat a cut. But the memory did help, he is convinced, to hold the line against defeat, a pummelling of the spirit from which recovery might have been at discouraging, if not impossible odds.

Perhaps now, he suggests, he is ready to recreate for himself another kind of buzz – one that that follows the reality of the achievement rather than its promise.

"I'm hoping my background comes into play over the next few days," Rose said. "When the wind reaches a certain level I think it just becomes a matter of feel out there. The yardage book goes out of the window. This is, hopefully, where growing up in the UK and having played some really big events in atrocious weather might just pay off."

And deliver, beyond his first piece of major silverware, quite what? That which he wants most of all, you have to suspect – that feeling that came to him before his professional career began.

He tells you: "No, I don't think I ever had that feeling again – not that same buzz, especially the way it finished, chipping into the hole.

"I've never experienced anything like the feeling I had when that shot went in. Of course, I've had some satisfying moments, including the one that came when I realised I had won the European Order of Merit last year, but, no, it wasn't quite the same.

"I've always thought that what I achieved in 1998 was the next best thing to winning the Open. For me to experience anything bigger than that I certainly need to go out and win this golf tournament. I believe it can happen, and certainly it is the way I've always had it set up on my mind."

Whether it is set up in his mind, or perhaps even lodged in his heart, there is no doubt about the degree of Justin Rose's compulsion. You can, after all, live on the high of one buzz for only so long before it is blown away.

Rose's record at the Open

1998 Tied for fourth place as low amateur (score: +2)

1999 Missed cut

2000 Did not play

2001 Tied for 30th place (score: +1)

2002 Tied for 22nd place (score: -1)

2003 Missed cut (score: +17)

2004 Did not play

2005 Did not play

2006 Did not play

2007 Tied for 12th place (score: -2)

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