Rose thrives in Merion hothouse

If Americans were going to be deprived of the thrill of a Phil Mickelson US Open triumph, or baffled silly by the ongoing Major championship disappearance of Tiger Woods; if we’re going to watch Merion bludgeon the world’s best players into a bloody, pulpy mess, then we will happily, enthusiastically embrace the only storyline remaining.

A classy, touching and fully fitting win for Justin Rose, a first-time Major champ about whom people wonder which is better — his golf swing or the way he handles life and those he encounters.

Throw in similar sentiments for Adam Scott’s Masters win earlier this year and we have a theme for our 2013 Majors: Likeable, Gentlemanly, Deserving Players Only Need Apply.

It’s easy to get maudlin about Rose’s story, but an appropriate amount of sentiment isn’t the wrong thing to feel.

Many of us have lost parents too soon, or have parents fading into the sunset. So, to see Rose — who lost his father, coach and caddie Ken, at age 57 in 2002 — acknowledge his 70th and final stroke at Merion on Sunday with a kiss of the golf ball, a point to the sky, a shutting of his eyes, and a welling of tears was a powerful thing, indeed.

He would later say it wasn’t lost on him that it was Father’s Day, and that he couldn’t help but think “my old dad Ken had something to do with it.”

There was some serious blinking going on in late night sitting rooms around that time. But heartstrings are one thing. Golf is another.

Justin Rose? The fifth-ranked player in the world? The guy who cut out Mickelson’s heart in the final three holes of the Ryder Cup Sunday singles last fall with putts as gutsy as the Medinah crowd was loud?

Yeah. Justin Rose has game. Tons of it. And it was never better — not when he won the Memorial in 2010, or at Cog Hill in the FedEx play-offs in 2011, or the WGC event at Doral last year — than on Sunday at Merion, when a penal USGA set-up, a rough in which you could lose small children, suffocating pressure — and a mid-round rain storm, to boot — made for damn near impossible conditions.

Rose’s answer was that stone-cold assassin’s round of even-par 70, the best score by any player in the final four twosomes. Only Jason Day’s 71 came close. Other contenders like Charl Schwartzel (78), Steve Stricker (76), Billy Horschel (74) and, yes, Lefty himself (74) couldn’t come close.

Though Rose was listed as 9/1 as late as Sunday morning by oddsmakers, a savvy punter would have noted that Merion’s No 1 demand was accuracy off the tee, and Rose, top-20 on Tour in accuracy, obliged time and time again. He hit 42 of 56 fairways at the 2013 US Open, tie-second in the field. Questions have dogged Rose about his putting under pressure, but he seems now to be coming to a place where his nerves and his stroke are joining forces.

When Rose is tossing another log on the Christmas fire and staring at the US Open trophy as he sinks into a bottle of red wine, he might want to cue up the DVD to watch his 17th and 18th holes at Merion.

That wicked par-three 17th hole, the 246-yard hole begging for a bogey, was tamed by Rose with a tee shot to about 10 feet, pin high, sitting up in the rough. He nearly chipped in, and he made par.

And then 18, with a one-shot lead, and the tee shot Johnny Miller called on NBC “the most important tee shot of his life” — to say Rose was fully committed to that drive would be to understate how intensely his golf swing melded with the moment, how his body did everything right under the most intense of pressures, how all his training and childhood dreams produced one of the great drives you’d ever want to see on the 72nd hole of the US Open.

Awesome golf, it was. It was all so good he couldn’t contain himself. He surrendered to his emotions, and looked skyward. Surely, he felt something when he did, an otherworldly energy, and the sweet rush of a job well done.