Profile / Editor / 23 May 2007 / Leave a Comment

He may still only be 26, but Justin Rose has already produced enough material during the first decade of his golf career to have the Hollywood producers knocking down his door to make a full-length feature film on his life.

From pitching in at the final hole of the 1998 Open Championship to finish joint fourth as a 17-year-old amateur to missing his first 21 cuts as a professional and still having enough mental strength to come back and be a success on both sides of the Atlantic, Rose has experienced most things - and he still has the best years of his career ahead of him.

The experience of missing so many cuts after turning professional would have broken a lot of men, but Rose has managed to bounce back from it all and, under the tutorship of new coach Nick Bradley, is now showing signs that he can be a major force in the game in the next few years.

A back injury has restricted the number of tournaments he has been able to play so far in 200, but three top-10 finishes in just six starts on the PGA Tour illustrate how close he is to making the major breakthrough.

Rose beat Phil Mickelson on his way to reaching the WGC Accenture Match Play quarter-finals while, for large parts of last month's US Masters, it looked like he could finally end European golf's eight-year barren spell in Grand Slam events before having to settle for a tie for fifth.

But the Englishman is also keen to play on the European Tour more in the next two years with a view to making the 2008 Ryder Cup team and he could be worth following in his appearances on this side of the pond.

Despite having played in just three tournaments, Rose still lies 11th in the Order of Merit thanks to his victory at the Australian Masters last November and his finish at the US Masters.

And he is relishing being back in front of his home supporters again this week when he tees up in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, where he is trading at 28 to win, 7 to come in the top five and 11 to finish as the top UK and Ireland golfer.

Rose's game has been on a steep upward curve since he slipped outside the world's top 100 ranked players in the middle of 2005 and his win in Australia - his first for four years - has given him the confidence to move forwards again.

Rose still has weaknesses in his game - he is yet to convince that he can lead from the front after throwing away several winning opportunities in America in the last 18 months - but the important thing is that, more often than not, he is challenging for honours.

He has finished in the top 10 of PGA events an impressive 19 times out of 102 appearances and, with a majestic short game, has the ability to get himself out of trouble when he strays offline.

Rose ranks third in the putting averages this season with 1.717 putts per hole and is eighth in sand saves, getting up and down more than 61 percent of the time, while he is also seventh in the standings for birdies per round (3.81).