Justin Rose kept his name atop the leaderboard Friday in the Masters, and he doesn’t have to look far to see an All-Star collection of contenders lining up behind him.
U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau is off to his best start in the Masters. Rory McIlroy made perhaps his greatest recovery at Augusta National.
Still lurking on the course was defending champion Scottie Scheffler.
Rose, who took a three-shot lead into the second round, made short birdie putts at both par 3s on the back nine that allowed him to atone for a few mistakes on his way to a 1-under 71. He was one shot ahead of DeChambeau (68), two clear of McIlroy (66).
Canadian Corey Conners currently sits two shots back of Rose.
“That’s the company that I expect to keep, and that’s where I have tried to be my whole career,” said Rose, whose lone major was the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion. “I’ve been a top-10 player in the world for a decade or more. So yeah, this is nice to be back in that mix.”
He set the target at 8-under 136 for Scheffler and the rest of the players in the afternoon, as the wind began to snap flags and cause uncertainty, a most uncomfortable feeling at Augusta.
This was the fifth time Rose had at least a share of the 18-hole lead at the Masters, and he has never done better than 71 in trying to follow that up.
Everyone else had to do a little more to stay in range, and it was particularly pivotal for McIlroy in his bid for the career Grand Slam. He had two double bogeys in his last four holes that ruined an otherwise good start on Thursday, leaving him closer to the cut than the lead.
And he played the front nine with one birdie and eight pars on Friday. But he came to life quickly, stuffing a three-quarter 8-iron to a foot on No. 10 and a similar play with a 9-iron to about 4 feet on No. 11. Best of all was hitting 4-iron off the pine straw on the par-5 13th that narrowly cleared the tributary of Rae’s Creek and set up a 10-foot eagle.
“I had to remind myself I was playing well,” McIlroy said. “I couldn’t let two bad holes dictate the narrative of the 16 good ones. I also had to remind myself this morning not to push too hard too early.”
That was a mistake he made in 2023, the year he faced a 10-shot deficit when he began his second round, tried to catch up as quickly as he could and wound up missing the cut.
This time, he had a steady start and “things sort of clicked into gear on the back nine.”
DeChambeau got within one shot on a couple of occasions until his lone bogey on the 16th. He responded with a birdie to again cut the deficit to one when he finished his round.
Matt McCarty was 3 over for his round after two holes, only to finish the front nine with four straight birdies and work his way back into the mix in his Masters debut with a 68. He was three shots behind, along with Shane Lowry (68).
Scheffler, trying to become only the fourth player to win back to back at the Masters, was only two shots behind when he made the turn.
Also in play Friday was the 36-hole cut of top 50 and ties. Jon Rahm gave himself his best chance by making a 10-foot par putt on the 18th hole for a 71 — one birdie, 17 pars — that put him at 2-over 146. That’s where the cut line figured to hover the rest of the day.
Bernhard Langer, 67, and Fred Couples, 65, were bidding to set the Masters record for oldest players to make the cut. Couples set the record two years when he was 63.
One player likely to be headed home was five-time major champion Brooks Koepka.
He was at even par for the tournament until a bogey on the 17th. On the final hole, he hooked his drive into the trees at the start and three-putted from about 12 feet at the end for a quadruple-bogey 8 and a 75.
Rose had a chance to be atop the leaderboard for the 10th round if it holds. It wasn’t as clean a round as it was on Thursday, but it was enough for him to think that a green jacket was still possible at age 44. Only one other person — Jack Nicklaus — was older (46) when he won a green jacket.
“Sometimes it’s hard to follow a low round with another one. Just the nature of it sometimes,” Rose said. “But I feel like if you’re playing good golf, you’re playing good golf. 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. I was pretty focused on the job at hand.”
